


The Longest Shadows

by PartlyCloudySkies



Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: A Post-Scrooge World, Action/Adventure, And everybody has to deal with that, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, F/F, Fist Fights, Future Fic, Interior Decorating, Shadow magic, Supernatural Creatures, duck wives
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2019-11-28 23:40:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18215231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PartlyCloudySkies/pseuds/PartlyCloudySkies
Summary: Ten years into the future, Webby and Lena have returned to a Duckburg. Though the city has moved on after the disappearance of its most famous citizen, Webby must confront the legacy of Scrooge McDuck. Meanwhile, Lena comes to learn what it means to be a creature of shadow.





	1. Chapter 1

Without meaning to or even realizing it, Lena started paging through the projector slides in rapid succession, the remote in her hand clicking with each press of the button as she stared at the screen and the way that light and shadow chased after one another. Back turned to her audience, she stared unblinking and mouth slightly open.

“Uh… Ms. Vanderquack? You’re going too fast, we can’t read your notes. Um.”

Lena jolted and turned to face her audience as if seeing them for the first time. She held her hand over her mouth and coughed. Her throat had gone dry.

Her train of thought hadn’t just jumped the rails; it had floated blithely over the landscape in defiance of all known laws of physics. And now it was crashing down, setting fire to the hills and scattering wreckage across the countryside. The train was unsalvageable, stern-faced shareholders grim with tight expressions in their monolithic counting house.

The projector’s light was reflected in the eyes of her students as they watched her. This was already going bad. Lena hadn’t blanked like that in _years_. Go figure it would happen right after she returned to Duckburg. She scrambled mentally to remember where she had left off.

“So… right. Sorry. Where was I…” She flicked back several slides until she found familiar territory. “Guess this is what I get for skipping my morning caffeine,” Lena said with a self-effacing chuckle. It wasn’t funny, but it was better than saying she had suddenly become fascinated by shadows that resurfaced her conflicted emotions about being a creature of darkness. That was a bit much for their first day.

“So, right, poetry seminar. We meet up once a week on Sundays. I’ve made reservations for this room with the library, but the weekends can get busy and there’s a lot of events so there may be times we’re sharing or we’ve moved. I’ll post any changes to our group chat, you can hit me up there. Log in info is on the handout I gave you.”

Lena had done this several times through her travels. It was a way to keep occupied, and she felt she knew how these things would go. She expected some no-shows, some boredom. She was not the type to speak in front of a crowd and her definition of a crowd tended to be “more than one.” What she did not expect was this alarming attentiveness. It was unnerving. As the attendees leaned forward on their folding chairs, she found herself wishing at least one of them would have the courtesy to ignore her, maybe tap at their phone.

This should be a good thing, though. It was… okay. She took a breath. She told herself it was okay.

“So… I’m not a teacher and this is no classroom. We’re all here because we want to, uh, learn and appreciate poetry. As a form of expression. The mechanics of it, the people, cultural allusions and all that sort of junk. I’ve printed out material that should start us off but feel free to jump in with your own contributions, you know? We can all learn from each other… and… all that. Okay?”

She found her words trailing off. Lena liked poetry well enough, but the intent stares seemed to indicate the people here were downright _rabid_ for it. There was the possibility that someone’s eyes might pop right out of their skulls if she so much as mentioned in passing the Beat generation.

“Any… questions?” Lena said, hoping to get a sense of what exactly she had gotten herself into.

A young woman sitting at the far end of one of the tables raised her hand.

“Shoot,” said Lena.

“So… when do we learn shadow magic?”

Silence followed. Lena stood unmoving. That aura of attentiveness radiating from the attendees intensified.

She bit down on and held her tongue between her teeth for a few seconds, and then unclenched the fists she had unconsciously made. She crossed her arms, one hand worrying at the thick cable knitting of her gray distressed sweater.

“Show of hands,” she said, her voice sharp with forced politeness, one eyebrow raised in a high arch. “How many people came here to, uh, learn shadow magic?”

~~~

A few minutes later, Lena was walking around the empty room, stuffing the abandoned handouts into her messenger bag. Really jamming them in there because it felt like _something_.

She should, she thought, tell Webby that she’d be back home earlier than expected. It would be the proper thing to do and Webby would instantly know that something was wrong and would be waiting at the door with hot chocolate, a blanket nest on the sofa. A laptop on the coffee table ready to stream something _anything_ to get Lena’s head out of this brand new funk it was in.

That was just Webby; she was extremely far too good and that was exactly why Lena was not going to call her. Lena didn’t want cocoa and a couch. She wanted to scream at someone so hard that it gives them PTSD.

Behind her, the door opened. She kept moving from empty seat to empty seat and crumpling paper.

“Hi,” she said without looking back. “You’re just in time to get the hell out, we’re canceled.”

“I figured as much when all those people ran out yelling while shadows chased them,” said a voice that caused her to pause.

Lena sighed. When it rains it pours. She turned around and leaned back against the table. She looked at Huey. He was standing at the entrance, with a doofy red knit beanie and a doofy sleeveless red puffer jacket that was probably in style 50 years ago. He fancied that it made him look like an outdoorsman. Lena thought it made him look like a street vendor selling hot dogs from out of a cart.

“What do you want, nerd?”

“Just checking in,” said Huey. If Lena were told that he was basically born with an aura of wide-eyed sincerity she’d believe it. Webby could be like that too, except less morally inflexible. Huey, however tolerable he was, was practically a walking rulebook. But when he wanted to help, Lena was always sure that he meant it, even when it wasn’t always appreciated.

“This is all your fault,” Lena said.

“I take it things didn’t go great? What happened?” Huey closed the door behind him and — to a mixture of Lena’s outrage and amusement — did that thing where he turned a chair around and sat on it backwards with his arms draped over the backrest. He looked up at her expectantly.

“You are a fucking trip, dude.” Lena rubbed the top of her beak in consternation. “They didn’t come here for poetry, they just wanted to learn magic tricks.”

“Oh,” said Huey. Anyone associated with the Scrooge name had a certain degree of fame attached to them these days. It turned out that a sizable portion of the city’s media was dedicated to following the old man around. With him gone, they had redirected their cameras to those he had left behind. 

“Yeah,” said Lena. “Oh. I knew I shouldn’t have let you put my real name on the event calendar.”

“I’m sorry, Lena. I didn’t realize people would act like this. Usually when dark magic is involved folks have the good sense to run the other way. I know you were looking forward to this. But at least you won’t be competing with the knitting society for this space. They are not shy about using their needles, I’ll say that for them.”

“The funny thing is, I really wasn’t. Look, I like poetry. Well, maybe ‘like’ is the wrong word. I have a fraught relationship with poetry that could go either way depending on my mood on any given day.”

“It’s my understanding that this is what it means for you specifically to like anything,” said Huey.

Lena gave him a flat look and also her middle finger.

Huey nodded. “Go on.”

“It’s just habit I guess. Whenever we settled down for a bit, I’d gravitate towards a library or cafe and Webby would find some martial arts master. It was a good way for us both to learn and make connections, tap into the rumor network. That sort of thing. This is the first time I had it go down like this.” Lena waved her hand dismissively. “Left alone after chasing off a bunch of wannabe warlocks.”

“Okay, so this one thing didn’t work out,” said Huey. “That doesn’t mean you’re _alone_. And it doesn’t mean that you have to do this one thing. It can be other things! There’s a bicycle club, there’s a youth center down the street that has a baking class, there’s —”

“Relax. I’m not about to spiral into depression over it. Besides, can you really picture me decorating a cake?”

Huey’s expression turned serious. “It’s not about making a cake. It’s like you said, it’s about connecting and networking. Communities only work when we know each other, you know. Junior Woodchuck —”

“Don’t say these things at me.”

“Lena, you literally helped me with the grand opening of a community center this weekend.”

“Yeah just because I might believe in the cause doesn’t mean I want to hear the sales pitch.”

Huey raised his hands in mock defeat. “Just saying, we have a lot of resources you can use. I mean, you’re basically a McDuck. McDuck adjacent. You qualify for our cellular family plan and everything.”

“Ngh. No offense, but pass.” Lena had taken Webby’s name with Webby’s abundance of encouragement, not that Lena needed to be talked into it. Shedding her old name felt like shrugging off a heavy weight. She had exchanged rings with Webby. And Webby was as close to being a McDuck without being an actual blood relative, so there was some transitive property that rubbed off on Lena. A bit of legal wrangling was involved, considering she was to some degree a magical creature and not, in the eyes of the law, a citizen. Several teams of McDuck lawyers made their retirement money by shepherding Lena through loopholes and exceptions to a place of relative security. The benefits of obscene wealth and being in proximity to it.

“You know,” Huey said, rubbing the back of his neck, “if wannabe warlocks are a problem, there’s always real ones.”

“Dude, I’m not about that life anymore.”

“What does that even mean? Isn’t that _literally_ your mode of existence? Magic and all the irrational things about it that give me a headache?”

“I have a fraught relationship with —”

“—magic that could go either way yada yada yada,” Huey completed for her. “Okay, sure. But it’s a part of you. Saying that you’re giving up magic is like Louie saying he’s giving up… money.”

Lena picked up her bag and fiddled with the fasteners. “I’m not giving up magic, I just don’t want to get heavy about it. I have a good life, okay? I’ve got this thing with Webby and it’s really, really good. I want to keep it grounded. I _should_ keep it grounded. A little hocus pocus here and there is fine, but I’m not looking to put on a wizard hat or whatever. I want to focus on the part of my life that’s not spooky shadow business, so no, that’s not a scene I’m interested in dipping into. All that stuff is best left to nerds like you with your fantasy books.”

“I prefer speculative fiction, thank you very much,” Huey said primly. “It’s a window into the infinite unfolding possibilities of our future and —”

“Don’t care. The point is I’m happy as things are. I know just enough magic to get by. I want to skim the waters. Not jump into the deep end.” 

“Well, if you say so,” said Huey. “It’s just… you never know when it could come in handy.”

“Dude… drop it. You are seriously rocketing up to the top of my list of least likable people right now and I gotta tell you, there are some heavy hitters on that list.”

Huey opened his mouth, then closed it. Lena turned away from him. The little annex she had reserved had windows that opened out into Duckburg. Rows of buildings that clung to the side of the gently sloping hill that was capped by McDuck Manor, looming over the city. There really wasn’t any other word for it. It wasn’t especially imposing, but it drew the eye of anyone with a view of the skyline, and the ornate gates caught the sunlight and sent a distracting glare Lena’s way.

She hadn’t even intended to look at it, but there were moments just like this where she would look out a window and… well, it drew the eye. Like a magnet or a familiar face popping up in the corner of her vision. She could sense Huey behind her, doing the same, looking up at the top of the hill. The same happened to Webby, during quiet moments. Lena wondered if they would always be defined by the manor and by its former owner. Like little moons caught in the orbit of a massive planet.

Then the mansion exploded.

Lena saw a brief flash, then a plume of smoke poured out from the main entrance in a great billowing gout. Then sound caught up with sight, and she heard the explosion like a thunder crack that shook the windows in their frame.

“Well shit,” she said. She turned around and Huey was already pushing out the door.

Lena felt a moment’s hesitation, hopped in place with indecision, then chased after him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutouts to secretsoup for help with the story
> 
> Gonna say this right now so ain't no one gonna be shocked of it: expect updates to be sporadic
> 
> That being said thanks for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

Webby sidestepped the fist coming at her from the left. Her opponent’s weight shifted from one foot to the other and she lashed out with an expert kick. When people fought her they tended to overcorrect when they were on the attack. A side effect of fighting someone so short and Webby had no qualms with turning that into an advantage. She knocked her opponent’s leg out from underneath. They landed hard on the blue foam mat.

“And that’s it,” said the company trainer standing off to the side. “Everybody take notes?” he said to the audience sitting around the edge of the sparring circle. “I don’t want to see any of you flailing your fists around like a bunch of schoolchildren in their first fight! You watch your opponent, you control your movements, you let _them_ make the mistake. Partner up and don’t embarrass me!”

Webby reached down and clasped her opponent’s arm, pulling them back up to their feet with ease. Webby performed a bow that was hastily returned.

Then she was left alone as the participants went to spar amongst themselves. They moved away from her like water from oil.

Webby never knew quite what to do in situations like these. She adjusted her pink sparring gi self-consciously. Standing by herself in an otherwise crowded room was far more daunting than a life or death struggle.

Bouncing on her feet, Webby wished Lena were here. She would know what to do.

“Vanderquack!” the trainer shouted over the shouts and the grunts. “The boss wants to see you.”

“Not _my_ boss,” Webby said automatically, though the trainer had already tuned her out in favor of yelling at someone nearby who had somehow managed to punch their own nose.

“That can always change, you know.”

From the bleachers lining the training room, Webby picked out a slouching green figure. You shouldn’t really be able to lounge on hard aluminum bleachers, but Louie was a lounger committed to the craft, and he made it work like he made his absurd green business suits work. Webby padded across the mat and stood in front of him, her hands resting on her hips.

“I was wondering if you were gonna show up,” she said. 

“What, miss my favorite asskicker? Nah. It was just a real chore getting up out of bed. I’d walk over and hug you but… now that I’ve settled in, this thing is kind of comfy.”

Webby rolled her eyes and executed a gymnastic leap that landed her next to Louie. She picked him up by the collar of his suit jacket and caught him in a crushing embrace.

“Holy crap you’ve gotten strong!” Louie gasped out. “What do you do now, bench press cars?”

“Hah! No, silly!” Webby dropped him and smiled. “That would be impossible. I mean, with the right motivation I can tip one.”

“Right, of course.” Louie picked himself up and straightened his suit. He gestured down towards the exit and Webby walked alongside him. When they reached the bottom, Webby looked at Louie. He was breathing noisily through his mouth.

“Did you get winded walking down these steps?” she said.

“A lifestyle of indolence and sloth will do that to you.”

“I’m not sure you should be saying that with such, uh, pride.”

“I’m the richest duck in Duckburg and I did it while hardly raising a finger,” Louie said. “My lack of athleticism _is_ a point of pride.”

“Inheriting money from the previous richest duck in Duckburg probably helped.”

“Of course it did, and I used that seed money to kick Louie Inc. into high gear. Hey, look sharp out there!” That sentence being called out to the sparring trainer who walked among the trainees.

“You got it boss!”

“I mean it! I don’t want any of you goons messing up like you did in Rome!”

Satisfied, Louie turned away.

“Thanks for showing those idiots a few moves, by the way,” Louie said to Webby. “Also thank you for not killing any of them.”

“Psh. I know how to pull a punch. What was that about Rome?”

“That team you were just fighting was sent on a mission to exorcise some ghost. Roman legionnaire or something like that. Started haunting after a construction crew disturbed it. They lost to a single 3000 year-old ghost and I lost a contract.”

“It would be fun to fight an ancient ghost.” Webby said with a faraway look in her eyes. “I mean. More than I already do.”

“Well,” said Louie with a sly look, “like I said, I’ve got a position open for you.”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t…”

“Spot for Lena too, of course. I’m way understaffed in the shadow sorceress department.”

“No…”

Louie gave Webby a side-eyed look as they walked but said nothing. They stepped out of the room and into a corridor that curved gently inward. They were in a cylindrical office building that was modern and sleek with brushed metal and enamel white surfaces. Sunlight streamed in one side. The metal grid that ran over the windows cast criss-cross shadows over the hall, dividing up the space in a way that looked to Webby like panels in a comic book.

“Step into my office,” said Louie. “Let’s chat.”

“Why do I feel like I’ve just been told I have to go see the principal?”

“Weren’t you homeschooled or whatever? How do you even know that’s a thing?”

“I know that’s a thing! I watch shows.”

“Well, principals don’t have penthouse offices you get to using private elevators,” Louie said. They had stopped at a row of elevators. They were plain metal doors with a call panel to one side. Louie walked past them and gestured grandly at the final elevator. It was framed by potted plants with broad green ivy leaves that twined around the columns of a pink marble portico. Rather than a call button, there was a black sensor square that Louie pressed his thumb against.

And when he did, music filled the air.

Webby cast about with her eyes, spotting the hidden speakers, then she looked at Louie. “You make it sing ‘Hello, Louie’ to the tune of ‘Hallelujah,’ she said flatly.

Louie nodded, giddy. “The London Philharmonic said they wouldn’t do it but let’s be real, with enough money you can get them to perform at a birthday party in a pizza place.”

Webby shook her head. Then waited. And waited.

The music did not stop, the doors did not open.

“We… are supposed to get on an elevator, right?” she said.

Louie looked at her, affronted. “Now? And miss the music?”

“I… I don’t need to hear this! Louie! I got it! I got the gimmick! Let’s just go to your office.”

“No, no, no, no, no,” Louie said rapidly. “These doors physically do not open until the piece has been played in its entirety. It’s going to be a transcendent three and a half minutes of aural paradise.”

With an exasperated sigh, Webby looked around again and found the stairwell access. “You listen to this, I’ll run to the top, okay?”

“No!” Louie said to her already retreating form. “Oh, damn it, you’re actually going to run all the way up there and you can do it too. Stupid legally mandated fire escapes!”

The door closed behind Webby, and the sound of her feet propelling her upwards was lost in the chorus that echoed down the corridor.

~~~

Webby took the stairs two at a time with ease and relished each cleared flight. She needed the physical exertion to clear her mind.

By the time she had reached Louie’s penthouse office suite, she had only barely broken a sweat. The secretary had to do a double take at the sight of her, but was familiar enough with the McDuck family to wave her through into Louie’s office.

Going from reception to his office was a jarring transition. The ceiling leaped upward leaving a vertiginous space above Webby. The walls receded on either side and light poured through a massive floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall window that took up the far end of the office. The place was unfurnished save for the desk set in front of the window, silhouetting Louie as he sat back in his overstuffed chair. He waved and Webby could see his beak move, but she was so far away she couldn’t hear him. Webby rolled her eyes and made for the desk.

“ — so all my old stuff is radioactive now. It’s all supposed to get replaced today, but you know how it is with deliveries.”

“What?” said Webby.

“I was explaining why there’s nothing here. Beat you up here, by the way. Elevators beat legs. But yeah, I don’t even have my mini-fridge full of Pep. Can you believe this?”

“Real shame,” Webby said. She pulled up a severe wooden chair and sat.

“I know, I know.” Louie put his feet down from the desk and straightened himself out, clasping his hands in front of him. “So. What’s wrong?”

“What? Nothing’s wrong.”

“Uh huh. Webby, interesting fact about me. I didn’t get to be the richest duck in Duckburg by not knowing how to read people.”

“No,” Webby said. “Again, you got to be the richest duck in Duckburg by inheriting a chunk of the previous richest duck in Duckburg’s wealth.”

“I mean, that did help. So. Is it Lena? You get tired of her?”

“What! What? No!” Webby shouted.

“You two have been joined at the hip, it’s nauseating. Except now you’re alone. A fellow becomes curious.”

“We’re not joined at the hip! We go out and do our own thing all the time! Why would you even say that?”

Louie put his elbows on his desk and cupped his head in his hands. “Oh, boredom. I could use a little drama.”

“Have you considered a hobby?”

Louie shrugged. “I get interested in something, I just throw money at it until I own every bit of it worth owning. Then I get bored again. Nobody ever tells you that unfathomable wealth is so dull.”

“Truly you bear an unbearable burden.”

“I soldier on. So dish.”

Webby sighed. She liked Louie, for the most part. Coming back, however, left her feeling disoriented. Even if she had followed Louie’s rise in Duckburg as she and Lena traveled the world, it was hard to reconcile her memories of him with the actual CEO sitting in front of her.

“Tell you what, you tell me what’s bugging you and afterward you can go back down to the training level and beat up a few of my employees.” said Louie.

“You’re awful,” Webby said, “I would have figured you were going to offer me a Pep or something.”

Louie tapped his bill and squinted. “Mmm… I’m trying to weigh which of the two options represents the greatest expense to me personally.”

Webby glared.

“Okay, okay, ha ha. Just a little joke.” Louie stooped down and opened a compartment in his desk. He came up, grabbed a coaster and slid it and a can over to Webby.

Webby looked at him. “You said you didn’t have a —”

“It’s my backup mini-fridge. I’m not a barbarian.”

She held the can in two hands, not bothering to open it. Open soda cans always looked like a cyclops yelling at her, and Webby had too many memories of cyclopes yelling at her to make the association a frivolous one. “I mean… nothing’s really _wrong_ ,” she said. “We’re great. It’s just… coming back to Duckburg… makes me think.”

“Once you two linked back up you just kind of picked a direction and kept going.”

“Hah. Yeah.” Webby looked down at her can. “All the world at our fingertips, you know?” 

“Yeah,” Louie said dreamily. “All the money in the world and all the privilege that entails.”

“That’s not what I meant. I’ve seen places and things that I didn’t know existed. Louie! She… Lena showed me so much! She’s amazing! I knew she was magical but I had no idea what that really meant! And I know she’s capable of so much more, too!”

“Webby if you launch into another soliloquy about how much you love her I’m going to have to spontaneously die where I’m sitting.”

“I… don’t… I don’t make soliloquies!”

“I have your direct messages on my phone,” said Louie. He held his phone up and tapped into an inbox filled with large blocks of texts. “You’ve gotten really good at typing on a touchscreen.”

“Okay! Okay, that’s not important!”

“Right,” Louie said with a nod. “The point is things were great until…”

“Now we’re in Duckburg.”

“How terrible for you.”

“It’s not… I like it fine. You guys are here, Granny is here. It’s just… are we done moving around? Are we supposed to just… put down roots? I don’t know how any of this works. Lena’s off doing some poetry seminar thing and I’m… beating up your employees.”

“Poetry seminar thing?”

“Yeah! She’s such a good poet and —”

“Webby…” Louie pantomimed a gun to his head.

“This isn’t a soliloquy it’s a statement of fact! I know she loves it and she’s so good at it. I can’t do poetry. I mean, I love listening to it. Well, not actually listening to it. She never recites her poetry. I love reading it. Well, not actually reading it. She usually keeps it in a journal that I don’t pry into. I love sneaking peeks at it over her shoulder when I think she thinks I’m not paying attention. Ha ha.”

“Yikes,” said Louie.

“ _Anyway_. When we came back to Duckburg we kind of… it was like we agreed that it was time to have a normal life, you know? It’s just… Uncle Scrooge is gone, you’re doing… this. Huey’s doing his thing.”

“You do know that just because we are no longer being a bunch of globetrotting psychos doesn’t mean you have to stop,” said Louie. “Dewey’s still out there doing… whatever it is he does.”

“What _is_ he doing?” said Webby. “Nobody’s said anything about him.”

“Went off with Mom, probably jumped into a wormhole or magic portal. I’m sure they’ll show up just in time to warn us about some extradimensional crisis. That’s usually how that goes.”

“Oh. I thought he was still, you know, with the mask? What’s it called? He sent me a video of him kicking someone through a rose trellis?”

“The Greater Suburban Duckburg Backyard Wrestling League? He won the title of GSDBWL champion after he elbow dropped Bar Brawl Beagle from off the top of a gazebo.”

“Um. Oh.”

“Yeah. The scourge of municipal park picnic tables everywhere. But that was a couple years back. They still have a folding blue lawn chair in a place of honor dedicated to him.”

“Oh. It’s nice to have a... legacy. But Dewey is… not the best role model on how to be an adult,”

“But I am? _Huey_ is?”

“Someone has to be!” Webby blurted out. “Nobody ever bothered to teach me how! Granny taught me how to improvise an explosive using household objects! Uncle Scrooge taught me how to fight a gorgon! The only person in our family with the closest thing to a normal life is Donald. And… I didn’t pay that much attention to him. I was too busy. Making explosives and fighting monsters. Those aren’t exactly skills you can put towards a retirement.”

Louie looked at her, mouth open and eyes wide. “You _are_ retired! You’re independently wealthy! You have a chunk of Scrooge’s wealth in your name! Even Lena has a piece!”

Webby set her Pep on the desk and wrung her hands together. “I haven’t touched it. Neither has Lena.”

“What? How did you even fund your extended honeymoon?”

“Oh, you know, under the table stuff. People get real grateful when you save their town from werewolves. That kind of thing. And we’re both used to roughing it. Saved money on travel too. We tried the broomstick thing? Mostly for the look of it. I wouldn’t recommend it for long trips.”

“So you haven’t used _any_ part of what Scrooge left you?”

Webby looked away with a hard glint of defiance in her eye.

“He might come back, Louie.”

Louie sighed and ran his hands down his face. “Not having this argument. Half the time I get an interview they ask me if he’s coming back.”

“It’s just, what is the rest of my life now, Louie? I will literally follow Lena to the ends of the Earth but, you know, it’s probably not going to come to that so what will it come to? What are our days, weeks, years? Lena’s this amazing person. She’s brave and smart and she’s _literally_ magic. And I brought her back to Duckburg so she could… what, pay internet bills and stand in line at sub shops to pick up lunch? What kind of life is that? I — Louie?” Webby had been so carried away by her words she had not noticed the plush chair across from her was no longer occupied.

“Louie?” She got up and leaned against the desk to peer over the other side. She found him in a heap on the floor. His eyes closed. Then he opened one eye and looked up at her.

“I died,” he said.

Webby frowned. “Come on!”

“I did warn you.”

“I’m trying to have a sincere conversation here.” Webby said. She stepped back as Louie climbed back onto his feet. He dusted off his lapels.

“Seriously, have you talked to Lena about any of this?”

“No, no, not really,” Webby said as she settled back into the chair. “Mostly I’ve been saying, you know, ‘everything’s great!’” Her voice took a high, manic tone. “Those exact words. In that exact inflection. While I’m speed walking to somewhere else.”

“Hoooooo boy,” said Louie. “Why am _I_ the one always extolling the virtues of honesty? It’s not like you to be this reserved.”

“What if she starts having regrets? About Duckburg? About _me_? What if she looks ahead at her life and sees herself looking back at her life and feeling it was wasted? Then she’ll proactively head off her retroactive regret and —”

“Stop! Stop, stop. Do you know listening to this is actually costing me money?”

Webby flinched.

“I didn’t mean it like that, Webby. Just… ugh! You’re panicking over nothing! Just talk to her! I can personally guarantee that whatever worst case scenario is playing out in your head is not going to happen! And you know what? I’m gonna throw in a freebie: it’s clear to me that a bit of your concern is projection. If you would seriously just talk to her —” By now Louie was wagging his finger at her.

Then he was interrupted.

A terrible trembling shudder rippled all along the side of the building. The glass in Louie’s office window rattled. Webby looked past him, out the window, over Duckburg and towards the top of the hill where smoke poured out of McDuck Manor.

“Oh no…” she said.

Louie looked over his shoulder. “You said you haven’t touched your inheritance, right?”

“Why are you asking that now?”

“Because I think it just exploded. Again.”

“What?”

“No time, we’d better check it out!”

Louie hauled himself over the desk, sliding across and landing in front of Webby. She stepped aside as he barged past. Webby felt indecisiveness root her in place before she could shake herself into motion and she ran after Louie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All images and likenesses of the Greater Suburban Duckburg Backyard Wrestling League Champion Dewford "Dewey" "Dewmsday" Duck have been wholly registered to Louie Inc., who is the sole legal license holder of said merchandise. Please inquire about their fine goods and products wherever backyard wrestling paraphernalia are sold.


	3. Chapter 3

Within the gated grounds of McDuck Manor, two vehicles — one a sleek black limo with tinted windows and the other a compact red electric hatchback — slowed to a halt before the mansion. Doors opened.

“Webby!”

“Lena!”

“What are you doing here?” 

The two met in front of the entrance, which was pouring acrid smoke. Webby waved away stray embers. “My… childhood home is on fire? Shouldn’t you be at that poetry thing?”

Lena made a face. “Can we talk about that later?”

“Yes, please!” Huey said as he pushed past the two of them. Smoke billowed out of the wide open entrance. Topiary shrubs swayed in the hot thermals. “We have to put this out!”

“Isn’t that what firefighters are for?” said Lena. “Shouldn’t a truck be out here by now?”

Beside her, Louie shook his head. “They don’t do that anymore. Not after what happened a couple fires back.”

“There’s been _multiple fires_?” Webby said.

Huey retreated to his car and popped the trunk. “They form a perimeter at the bottom of the hill,” he called out. “And if anything tries to reach them they spray it with water, or whatever it is they do to defend themselves.”

Webby and Lena looked at each other.

“We… are still talking about fire, right?” said Webby.

“We wouldn’t be having problems if _someone_ had maintained the containment barriers like he was supposed to,” said Huey.

Louie laughed. “Oh ho ho, now I know you don’t mean me. I employed the finest discount wizards money can buy. The occasional hiccup is worth the savings, trust me.”

Huey marched up to Louie and glared, which Louie returned in equal measure. “You,” said Huey, “are a greedy, opportunistic, wealth-hoarding —”

Whatever insults he had lined up after that were lost to Webby as the last bit of her patience ran dry and she marched into the mansion with Lena trailing behind her.

~~~

The sound of her boots scuffing over the marble tile of the foyer set off a small storm of memories that Lena had to push down. “What was all that about?” she said.

“Who knows? I’d say the boys have sense enough not to start a fight in the middle of an emergency, but eh. There’s about a decade’s worth of evidence that says otherwise.”

They moved across the chamber with their heads bowed low to keep from the smoke. If Lena — who had been in more burning buildings than she cared to count — had to rate this particular fire, it would be a two out of ten. Fairly modest. Smoke but no actual fire to be seen — yet. A wind passed over Lena that made her shiver.

The mansion was always big in a way that kept Lena from ever feeling truly at home. There was something about it that felt predatory to her. A yawning maw that drew her in. It wasn’t enough to keep her from briefly living there, when the alternative had been an uninsulated, water-damaged hole in the ground. Warm bed. Stocked kitchen. Family. Of a sort. But there was that undercurrent of hunger, and in the quiet moments and the late hours when the halls were empty and Lena was awake, she could feel something tug at her, her… essence. Or soul. Or thoughts. Or whatever it was that made up the part of her that wasn’t meat and bone and nerve.

After all these years it pulled at her still. In front of her, Webby came to a stop.

“What’s up?”

“Does this place seem less on fire to you?” said Webby.

They had been following the faint trail of smoke into one of the mansion wings, and were in a corridor of dark wood and white plaster dimly lit by decorative sconces. Lena had mostly been on autopilot, but now she realized her eyes weren’t stinging and the air felt… breezy?

“Where’s that wind coming from?” she said.

“Further inside,” said Webby.

“That doesn’t make sense.”

Webby shrugged and resumed walking. Lena watched as Webby trailed her fingers along the wall in a subconscious gesture.

“Good to be back?” Lena said with wry humor in her voice.

Webby chuckled softly. “It was basically a coin flip if this place was going to be on fire when we showed up. I guess I should be grateful that it waited a bit so we could get settled in the city, you know? Get a chance to sleep off the jet lag. It’s so empty.”

At regular intervals they passed by plinths with esoteric artifacts under glass. There were paintings of various cryptids, often with Scrooge standing triumphant over them. “There’s no shortage of stuff,” Lena said. Her eyes were drawn to each one of these as they walked by.

“It feels like when I was a kid,” said Webby. “Before I met you and the boys. Uncle Scrooge didn’t talk to me. Everything was always so quiet. No conversations, no laughter, no blood-curdling screams, no laser guns or that special kind of shiny metal noise when a sacrificial dagger is being pulled from its jewel-encrusted scabbard.”

“When we get back home I’ll find the one we have packed up.”

“Aw. You’re sweet. Seeing this place like this again is just kind of strange. It’s like the old days, except it isn’t as big as it used to be. Hah. I bet I can’t even crawl underneath the floorboards like I used to. Wow, I forgot whether or not I got that explosives stash from under the third floor east wing’s kitchen cupboard.”

Webby broke from her musing and looked back at Lena. “What about you? Are you… glad you’re back?”

Lena was distracted by a glass-encased skeleton of what appeared to be a centaur the size of a toaster. A small brass plaque at the base of the display gleamed oily in the low light. “Mythical Scourge of Laganas, Found on Zakynthos Island,” it read.

Turning her head, Lena looked at Webby and gave her a wan smile. “Yeah. Sure.”

Webby’s expression descended into a frown and Lena mentally cursed herself. _Probably going to be talking about this later._

The wind was picking up as they chased it to its source through corridors until they found a closet that sparked a memory in Lena that pushed aside every other concern. Webby slowed to a stop at the door that had been flung open to a howling wind that pushed through her hair and caused nearby lights to rattle in their fixtures.

“Please don’t tell me that leads to the—”

“Other Bin,” said Webby. They entered what looked like another of Scrooge’s endless storage closets, except this one had a painting which swung on hinges, and behind it was a secret passage. The two traded a look.

Lena groaned. “That place sucks.”

“Well,” Webby gave her an encouraging smile. “let’s find out the damage.” She climbed up to the open entrance that led into the Scrooge’s underground secret vaults.

Lena wanted to debate the point, but she was already following, stepping through and onto the rickety steel spiral stairs that led down into the deep, abiding darkness of the Other Bin.

The precarious spiral trembled under Lena’s feet and when she put her weight on the handrail she felt it shift in its fixtures. As far as she was concerned, nothing good came of this place. Nightmares of dreamcatchers and shadowy puppet strings had followed her like a miasma for years.

Beyond that, just the idea of this place was miserable. Scrooge was a dedicated treasure hunter, and the things too dangerous for his money bin wound up here. Lena could feel the magic that was locked up in this place. She felt the energy and the heat of it. It was like Scrooge had caged a rainbow. Bound up an aurora. Trapped a shooting star.

Jailed an eclipse. 

The wind picked up and whistled over the steps in a mournful chorus that was starting to scrape on nerves already raw.

“You know what?” Lena said, loud enough to get her wife’s attention some turns below her. “If we’re gonna do this, let’s not screw around.” She held her hands up, palms turned towards the ceiling.

“Lena?”

The Other Bin was lit by high halogen lights from wire cage fixtures on the ceiling and they splashed Lena’s shadow harsh against the steps. She closed her eyes and after a moment’s focus, she fell backwards and where her body met her shadow she sank down into it. Her shadow jerked into life, two glowing eyes flaring to light on its face. It swirled and flowed down the steps, heading for Webby.

As the shadow thickened, Webby smiled, crouched, and leaped into it with her hands outstretched as if she were diving into a pool.

It descended rapidly down the steps with liquid mercury smoothness to the poured concrete floor of the vault. Once there it spat Webby out. She landed nimbly on both feet and Lena emerged after her, her shadow reforming on the ground under her feet. Webby hopped over and gave her a quick hug and hummed happily.

“What’s this about?” Lena said as she hastily returned the affection. Even after so many years, Webby could surprise her with sudden closeness.

“About you being amazing.”

“Ha, uh, okay. I just saved us a walk down some stairs but I’ll take it.” Lena tried to fight back the blush creeping up on her and looked to the side. It shouldn’t even be a big deal since they were _actually married_ , but there were it was.

“By being amazing! Come on.” And just as quickly as she was embracing Lena, Webby was padding down the endless corridor of the vault, scanning each door lining the walls as she did. It wasn’t hard to see that _something_ had gone down here. The walls were blackened, streaks of dark soot on gray concrete. Alarmingly, some of the doors seemed to be damaged, and some of the damage looked old. Here Lena was without a volcano-forged diamond dagger to fight off whatever horrors were loose. Should have brought that instead of poetry handouts.

And still the wind howled. The current moved over them, pushing further down into the vault and they went with it. The lights overhead swayed, and a dented door hanging from a single hinge swung and creaked as the air pushed against it. When Lena passed the door, she saw dark shapes shifting in the gloom. She picked up the pace. They passed another open door, this time bent in half as if punched in by some great force.

When Lena looked in — as inevitably she would — she saw a single light cast from the ceiling at the center of the room. Illuminated directly below it was a pedestal and on the pedestal was a wind-up cymbal-banging monkey, glassy amber eyes and yellow vest and red-and-white striped pants. Its cymbals were poised to crash together.

Just as she was about to leave its field of view, Lena swore she saw it look up from where it had been staring at its cymbals. Its mouth was wide and grinning, glass eyes gleaming. Lena did not go back to check.

“Is it me or has the stuff Scrooge stashed down here gotten creepier?” she said.

“We barely explored this place,” Webby said, forced to raise her voice over the wind. “Who knows what’s in here?”

“That’s a good question,” said Lena. “This place ever get properly inventoried?”

Then something in the air shifted. The ever present howling wind took on a different texture, a new sound layered over it, a keening wail that descended into an awful kind of bellowing that set off deep fight-or-flight instincts in Lena’s brain. A rectangle of red light splashed across their path as a tongue of flame was expelled from a nearby breached vault.

Webby held her arm out, ushering Lena to the far wall. Lena nodded towards the door and whispered. “Any idea what’s in there?” 

Squinting, Webby peered at the number over the door. They were dates, each one commemorating the adventure that Scrooge retrieved the artifact from.

Lena could identify the flash of recognition in Webby’s expression, and she waited.

“Okay,” said Webby. “We don’t really want to deal with what’s in there, but I think we won’t have to. Can you do a portal to the shadow realm? Over the door?”

Lena hesitated a moment, then nodded. Banishing something to the shadow realm was a big ask, but not impossible. With a gesture, her shadow seperated from her and stretched over the opened vault like a veil. Lena could hear a baleful howl spill out from within the chamber. Then the sounds of heavy footfalls.

Then she got that unnerving sensation of something passing through her shadow. It was like those Halloween blind boxes in haunted houses where you were told to put your hand in a box without looking, and it would be full of cold spaghetti but a guy dressed as a ghost would tell you that it’s his brain. She got an impression of fangs and four clawed feet. And as sudden as the feeling came, it vanished. The breached vault had gone dark and there were no sounds beyond the ever-present wind.

Webby brightened. “That wasn’t so bad, right? Looks like we found the source of the explosion, though.”

“We did? What was it?” Lena made a flicking motion that retrieved her shadow.

“That,” said Webby, “was a fire hound of the shadow kingdom of Gamangnara.”

“Wait. There’s a shadow kingdom?”

“Oh, you know how it is. Different cultures give different names to the same supernatural phenomena. I figured it was basically the shadow realm so when you offered it a way back home it took it. Poor little pup.”

Lena looked at their scorched surroundings. “Yeah. Little.”

“Anyway, it’s a good thing it didn’t reach the surface. It would probably try to eat the sun. That’s kind of their thing.”

“Oh, no, yeah. It’s definitely cool that it was down here. Instead of where it should be. The shadow realm. Where there’s no sun to eat.”

“Ha ha. Yeah.” Webby looked away. “I’m sure Uncle Scrooge had a reason for keeping it locked up. Maybe he didn’t have a way to send it home? Oh! Uh, maybe… no, never mind. We should check out what else is going on.”

“Okay, right,” said Lena. “Let’s go make it quick then, please. I feel like we’re in a zoo.”

“What’s wrong with zoos?”

“Ask the animals.”

Along the way, Lena couldn’t help but let out a sigh of relief when she saw that the door to the dreamcatcher was still secure. All the same, she power-walked past, studiously avoiding Webby’s curious look as she did.

They came to another vault that had been busted open. In this case the door had been blown clear from its hinges and was embedded into the opposite wall, where it had crushed another door. Lena could hear claws scrabbling against the dented metal.

Wind funneled into the empty door frame and it howled as it pass through.

Webby executed a tactical roll to the opposite side of the door as Lena sidled up to her side. Webby nodded at Lena, and Lena nodded back. There was a time, not that long ago, when they were still figuring out how exactly they fit together. Maybe that was still happening. Maybe it was an ongoing process. But when it came to charging into a room of unknown danger, they fell into a well-worn pattern that required little beyond a look and a shift in stance to communicate that it was time to punch and/or magic something.

The look Webby was giving her now was the “I go in, you’ll screen me with a veil of shadow, then come in and flank to the left. You hit them high while I go low, once they’re on the ground we get them to stop whatever it is they’re doing.” look.

Webby’s looks could be very expressive like that, and Lena nodded.

She gave the signal: a flick of her wrist that lengthened the vault’s shadows until whatever was inside would be hopelessly blind. Webby rounded the corner and plunged into the darkness. Lena’s eyes could pierce any shadow she was manipulating, but Webby had nothing but trust. Trust in her own abilities and trust in Lena. She did that a lot. She did _this_ plan specifically a lot. She trusted in Lena’s shadow magic in a way that Lena didn’t, and there were times when she lay awake at night, Webby sleeping peacefully beside her and she would stare up at the ceiling and simply feel a maelstrom of emotions at that. Too many to weigh them as positive or negative. Simply a deluge of conflicting feelings that threatened to leave her dizzy as she lay still.

But that was only ever after a fight. In the moment, Lena was focused and she dashed at an angle that would give her a good flanking position. The vaults in the Other Bin all followed a template that Lena knew well, that first and only visit having seared itself into her memories. Lena’s eyes pierced shadows and she could see Webby, already crouched to attack, angled towards the sound of howling wind. Lena shifted her gaze to the source and saw something squat and…

“Wait! Webby!”

Too late, Webby had already leaped, one leg extended into a kick.

_Crack_

“Ouch!”

Lena waved the shadows away as Webby landed in a heap on soft ground. Webby braced herself against the ground with her hands, blades of green grass peeking between her fingers. “What? What is this?”

“Webby! Holy shit did you break your foot?”

“I don’t think so… but why is there a lawn here?”

In the dim light, both could see that in the middle of the vault was a circle of green. Neat, straight blades of grass sprouted from the grown. And in the center of that was a tree stump, unphased by the blow Webby had dealt it.

At the base of the stump, amid its gnarled roots, was a tiny door painted in a color made indistinct from age and weathering. It hung open into an impenetrable void that sucked in air and whistled eerily.

Lena moved behind the stump from her flanking position and, extending one finger delicately, swung the door shut.

The air stilled and the howling stopped. The only sound in that moment was their breath and the gentle creak of light fixtures coming coming to a standstill. Then there was the metal _clink_ of Lena sliding the tiny bolt that was on the door into place, keeping it shut. In place of the wind, there was the smell of fresh loam and dew as if they were standing in a glen under the morning sun rather than a basement.

From where she lay sprawled on the ground, Webby’s mouth hung open and she raised an eyebrow. “Huh,” she said. Then she attempted to stand. “Ow.” She settled back down.

“You’re hurt,” Lena said as she stepped past the stump.

“I’m okay,” said Webby.

“You’re high on adrenaline is what you are. Don’t try to get up.” Lena knelt down with her back to Webby, who clambered up. Lena grunted as she stood with Webby on her back.

“I guess I should keep in mind that the ‘charge in and kick everything until it gives up’ plan doesn’t apply to _every_ situation,” Webby said with an abashed chuckle.

“Next time let’s scout the room we’re about to breach? I feel like we’ve gone over this before.”

“Yeah. I just really like charging in. What is that thing anyway?” Webby rested her chin on Lena’s shoulder and looked down at the stump.

“Fairy door,” said Lena. “Door to the fey lands.”

“Do fairies live in a vacuum?”

“Maybe a moral vacuum.” Lena turned away from the stump and soon she was carrying Webby down the corridor towards the spiral stairs. “Maybe they were playing a prank. Maybe their entire world vanished and was replaced by the void of space. It’s a possibility and I can’t say I’d shed a tear.”

“I’ve never heard you give an opinion on fairies before and I’m finding this all very wild,” said Webby.

“Have you ever had to deal with them?”

Webby tilted her head in thought. “You know, I don’t think I have.”

“Ugh. All magic, no empathy. They tend to leave you alone unless you’re dumb enough to go find them though, so I think we’re good.”

“You’re sure?”

“Well, nobody’s replaced our blood with spring water or sprouted honeysuckle flowers out of our eye sockets as a prank, so that’s a sign.”

“Ew.”

“They’re not exactly patient or subtle.”

“I always kind of hoped they were tiny and cute and sparkly. And magical.”

“Babe, you’re tiny, cute, sparkly _and_ I’ve seen you punch dudes four times your size through a wall. That’s all the magic I need.”

“Awww ha ha,” Webby said. “Lena…”

Then, behind them, something roared.

“Ahhh!” Webby said, “Lena!”

The damaged vault opposite of the fairy door burst open and a… a…

Lena tried to get a good angle on it, but Webby’s hair obscured her view and mostly she got an impression of… something large, and with teeth. Inside multiple mouths.

“Run!” Webby said.

Lena picked up the pace. “What is it?”

“I don’t know, Lena! It’s a tooth monster! I don’t know literally every monster, just most of them! This one got left out of my studies I guess! Just run!”

Lena moved at a trot that was not at all ideal under the circumstances. It was a cold comfort that the thing behind them seemed to have more limbs than was really necessary, and it was taking time to sort itself out. Once it did though, things were going to go south fast. As she huffed, Lena concentrated on her shadow. She didn’t like using her magic so often in a single day, but she liked being eaten a lot less.

As the thing slobbered behind them and she could hear a rhythm form in its gallop, Lena slipped into her shadow and brought Webby with her. It was like falling through the surface of an icy lake: a brief, cold resistance followed by a sudden plunge into darkness.

Out in the material world, her shadow sped across the floor. No longer attached to a body, it darted towards the long spiral staircase up. The monster charged headlong after it, a mass of leathery legs and glistening teeth and slavering maws.

Lena’s shadow slithered up the stairs. For all the awesome magic Webby admired her for, shadows had their limitations and Lena, though she hated to admit it, was out of practice for the amount of power she was using today. She couldn’t project her shadow directly to the exit, forced instead to move along the surfaces of the physical world. 

So when the thing slammed its bulky mass into the stairs, jarring the whole rickety construction into a cascade of broken parts, Lena was forced out of her shadow as the handrail she had been surfing on broke into pieces. She fell, face first and arms splayed out in front of her, the staircase falling apart all around her. And yet, the rapidly approaching ground, the monster waiting there, the sickening vertigo of the fall, all that occupied none of her attention as she cast around desperately to find where Webby had gone.

If she wasn’t here then Lena had to have lost track of her when the monster jarred them out of the shadows, and the thought of leaving Webby behind in the shadow realm…

… She’d rather they take their chances with the tooth monster.

Lena twisted and contorted around, sending herself into a slow somersault as she frantically tried to get a bead on Webby.

Then, somewhere in the clatter and clamor of metal hitting the cement below, Lena heard a distinct _bang_ and _click_ that she’d recognize anywhere.

“Brace!”

Lena felt the wind get knocked out of her as a hard arm wrapped around her midsection and she was snapped out of her fall. Her vision swam as Webby swung her in a leisurely arc, with one arm keeping Lena secure and the other gripping her grappling hook.

Holding onto Webby’s shoulders, Lena caught her breath. She looked down at the monster. It circled and snapped but… it didn’t have wings, which was a stroke of luck. Lena sighed, settled into Webby’s grip, then pressed a kiss against her cheek.

And Webby nearly dropped her in shock.

“Webby!” Lena squawked.

“Sorry! Sorry! I got you. I think we’re okay.”

“Honestly you should be used to the kisses by now.”

“I’m literally holding us both up with one hand and you’re making me sweaty!”

Lena was too full of the rush of averting death to care. She smiled broadly “I think it’s cute. So you keep that thing on you even when you’re wearing pajamas?”

“You know I’m always prepared,” Webby said, “and these aren’t pajamas. It’s a karate gi worn by practitioners of a proud tradition of physical combat.”

Webby pressed a switch on her grappling hook and slowly it began to reel itself upwards.

“You know,” said Lena. “It’s been kind of a fantasy of mine to make out with you while we’re dangling over, like, a pit of lava or a monster.”

“That would be — Lena! Sweaty hands!”

The sound of the hook’s tiny motor, the growling beast below, and Lena’s laughter echoed off the flat walls of the Other Bin.

~~~

When they pulled themselves back up into the mansion, Webby crumpled to the floor. Under better light, Lena was taken aback by what she saw.

“What the hell! Webby! You’re hurt!”

“I’m okay.”

“You —”

“I know, I know, adrenaline. Let me enjoy it while I have it.”

Her foot aside, Webby had gotten a cut over one eye, and if the yellowing around the wound was any indication, there’d be swelling if she didn’t get it treated soon. There were smaller injuries and she was favoring her side in a way that indicated, at the very least, a bruised rib.

“I kinda got knocked into the, uh, central pillar thingy? You know, for the stairs. When I fell out of your shadow.”

Lena frowned and cradled Webby’s chin in one hand. Her eyes were alert and she wasn’t slurring her words, so there probably wasn’t a concussion. There was a twinge of guilt on Lena’s part. This could have been avoidable if she were a little faster with her shadow.

When she carried Webby out of the mansion, they both blinked at the sun-bathed lawn and picked out shifting figures in their blurred vision. A red one jogged up to them

“Hey! Are you okay? What happened in — oh, jeez, Webby? Let’s get her to my car, I’ve got a first aid kit. I can —”

“I know how to patch up my own wife, Huey,” Lena said even as she walked with him. “I’ve done it enough times.”

“I can’t believe you two just walked right in!” said Louie.

“We had to do something!” said Webby. “Something other than arguing over who did what! Like a bunch of idiots! Ow! Is it possible to yell so hard you sprain your thumb? I think I just did it.”

As their vision returned, more figures resolved into clarity. Large, broad-shouldered folks in padded gray armor. They wore helmets and had a variety of gadgets strapped to their bodies. Emblazoned over their riot shields and stenciled on their shoulders were the letters CCC.

“What’s with the army?” said Lena.

Louie puffed out his chest. “Courtesy of Louie Inc., the Cryptid Containment Commandos are an eternally vigilant frontline urban defense force equipped to deal with any kind of incursion by anything supernatural, paranormal, otherworldy or metaphysical!”

A squad detached from an armored van and marched up to them, the lead saluting smartly. Then a gadget on his arm chirped and his squad crouched, on alert. He took the gadget, a boxy little thing with a velcro patch on the bottom, off his shoulder and waved it around until it started clicking when he pointed it at Lena.

“This one’s registering pretty high on our scanners, sir,” he said to Louie.

“Leave her be, soldier. She’s family.”

“Understood, sir. Entering her into the database under Exception Alpha.”

“Love to be in a database,” Lena said as she swatted the hand holding the gadget out of her face.

“You knew the problem was coming from the Other Bin?” said Webby.

“It’s _always_ the Other Bin,” said Louie. “We get breaches there every couple months. This wasn’t even the worst one.”

“There’s a big tooth monster that’s still loose,” said Lena.

Louie made an apathetic sound. “Tooth monster? You should have seen the eye monster. I didn’t see it personally, I had it described to me by my employees while they were attending therapy. But I imagine it’s worse. Okay troops! You heard her! Teeth monster! Get down there before it, I don’t know, chews something up.”

The CCC hustled into the manor.

“Are they going to be alright?” said Webby.

“They’re trained for this kind of thing. You can’t personally fight every magical beast in the world, you know. That’s why we have to nurture a robust workforce. You should expect the bill electronically, by the way.”

“You’re _charging_ me?”

“Uncle Scrooge left the Other Bin to you in his will, and frankly you haven’t exactly been doing anything to keep it from falling apart — Ow! Huey!” Louie glared at Huey, rubbing the shoulder he had slugged.

“I think Webby has more important things on her mind at the moment,” said Huey. “And _you_ have better sense than to charge family!”

“I was going to give her the discount — Ow! Okay! I’ll work it out, I’ll work it out. A guy tries to make an honest buck…” Louie grumbled as he walked away. 

Huey stood in front of Lena, looking at Webby who still clung to Lena’s back. “You never actually read the will, did you?” he said.

“The Other Bin is _mine_?” Webby said, voice soft and small. “Why would he…”

“I’m sure he explained it in the letter he left you,” Huey said gently. “You didn’t read that either? He wrote letters for all of us, in the event that he…”

Lena managed to catch his eye and she looked at him meaningfully.

“Well…” said Huey. “We just need to take care of his things. And he’s got a lot of things!”

Webby slumped against Lena’s back. She smelled like sweat and blood and machine oil.

“I’m gonna have her pop a few painkillers and wrap her up with some ice packs,” Lena said. She walked past Huey. “If there’s nothing life-threatening I’m taking her back to our apartment.”

“You can spend the night in the mansion,” said Huey.

“Ha ha. Nope.”

“Are you sure?”

“Been taking care of her for a while now, Red. I’m sure.”

When she settled Webby onto the open trunk of Huey’s little car, she smiled and Webby smiled back. Then she winced as Lena pressed on her foot.

“Does it hurt when I do this?” said Lena.

“A little bit.”

“How about here?”

“Yeah.”

“Sharp pain? Or throbbing?”

Webby considered this. “Throbbing.”

“Well,” said Lena, letting go. “Good news: you didn’t break your foot.”

“Good. That’s my kicking foot.”

“You won’t be doing that for a while,” said Lena. “You need rest. Come on, let’s bandage you up and go home. I’ll take a spare car from the garage.”

“Beautiful angel. You’re so good to me,” Webby said.

Lena smiled at her. “I try to be.”


	4. Chapter 4

“I can walk, Lena.”

“That doesn’t mean you should. Get my keys out of my pocket, will you?”

There was the sound of a rattling lock and then the door to their apartment swung open, light from the hallway spilling into the dark. Lena felt for the light switch nearby, then carried Webby inside. Webby had her foot wrapped in a splint, one eye covered over with gauze and an ice pack, most of her fingers bandaged as well as one shoulder. Lena was willing to admit she might have gone overboard, but better than doing nothing. Besides, Huey turned out to have an abundance of supplies in his car. So no harm in stocking up for free.

Webby did not want to touch Scrooge’s money. Not out in the wider world and not here in Duckburg. It was… inconvenient as hell, Lena was forced to admit. But the old man was like a live wire in Webby’s head and Lena had learned to just leave it alone. It was like with every glimpse of the sea, Webby would expect him to materialize from the deeps at the prow of some long-lost treasure-laden pirate ship. Or at the edge of every rain storm she’d watch for him to surf down the rainbow he looted a pot of gold from. Maybe that was an exaggeration but as long as Scrooge’s disappearance remained a mystery, to Webby he was still out there. Sometimes, Lena hoped he was. Because then he’d return and she could sock him in the face for leaving this exposed nerve in her wife that never healed over.

In the meantime they made do and scrimped and saved and, on occasion, they chased down a monster or solved a mystery for money. And when they returned to Duckburg they had enough for a little studio in the harbor district, which was only mildly crime-ridden.

The entrance to their apartment opened directly to a kitchen on one side and a modest, narrow closet on the other. Beyond that was everything else. A living room/bedroom consisting of a couch with a coffee table. Behind that, a bed and a desk and nearby, unpacked boxes spilled out of a larger closet. There was a bathroom and on the opposite wall, there was a window that led out to a wrought iron fire escape. Tucked into a corner of the window sill was a little flowering cactus in a bright red pot that Webby put there to give their view a little color.

Her old room in the manor was nearly bigger than this entire place and there was a spot where the floor under the carpet sagged, but it was theirs. Or, at least, the lease was theirs. And the view from the fire escape wasn’t too bad: the bay framed by old ornate skyscrapers.

Lena was about to ease Webby onto the couch when Webby finally shrugged her off and walked herself. Lena was unrepentant about how she fussed over an injured Webby, but she knew to back off when her wife wanted to stand on her own.

“I think I’m going to shower,” said Webby. “Wash off the day.”

“Good idea.” Lena moved past her and fell on the couch. It creaked as she flopped bonelessly into the cushions.

“Are… _you_ okay?” Webby said, giving her an appraising look.

“Just tired. I used more magic then usual. Need some rest.” A yawn took her by surprise, escaping her beak which she closed with a _clack_. She played it off with a slow stretch, reaching up and tugging at one of Webby’s unraveling bandages. She raised an eyebrow. “Unless you need help.”

“Just… you… take a nap.”

“Sounds good. Yeah.”

Webby rummaged through the closet and soon the drone of running water occupied the periphery of Lena’s senses and lulled her into a sleep.

Most times Lena was a light sleeper, but the fatigue that followed the overuse of magic sent her skimming over the fitful turbulence of her subconscious like a pebble skipped across water until it inevitably succumbed to the waves and the deeper depths. That’s where the nightmares lurked. If she was lucky she could thrash herself awake or inadvertently kick Webby out of the bed, causing her to rouse Lena in turn. Webby never seemed to mind, for which Lena was eternally grateful. But it usually took some sort of external shock to get her out of her sleep when she was magically drained.

“Dammit.”

Lena opened her eyes. Webby swearing was an occurrence rarer than a super blood wolf moon. She blinked rapidly and reached for her phone, wincing at the light of it as she checked the time. She was out for maybe 15 minutes, the shower now a slow drip. Lena gripped the sofa back and tried to get up only to find her legs were tangled in a blanket that was not there when she first lay down. She kicked it off and walked through the dark.

There was Webby, sitting on their bed, dressed in loose sleep clothes. She was attempting to apply fresh dressings to her wounds with limited success and judging by her expression, increasing frustration.

“You don’t have to do this alone, you know,” Lena said.

Webby started at her voice, then looked up at her with a slight smile. “Didn’t want to wake you.”

“Hold still,” Lena said. She returned to the kitchen where she retrieved a tin container from under the sink. “Got a present for you. Brand new, fully-stocked first-aid kit. Assembled from the local pharmacy.”

“Heh. Is that… the first thing you bought since we came back?”

“Got it while you were grocery shopping. I had a hunch,” Lena said. She knelt in front of Webby and examined her injured foot. “I got a feeling we’re going to be a repeat customer of theirs.”

“We might… not be?” Webby said.

Lena gave her a look.

“Okay, yeah. You’re right. Oo.”

“Hurt?”

“No, just kinda stiff.”

“Stiff is normal.” Lena stood up and pulled out a chair from the desk. She sat at it, flipped open the kit, and arranged the bandages, saline solution and other supplies across the mattress. Lena laid Webby’s arm across her lap and began dressing injuries with practiced ease.

“Sorry,” said Webby.

“Nothing to apologize for, Webs.”

“I got all banged up and —”

“Probably wouldn’t have happened if I were a bit faster with my magic,” said Lena. “That’s just facts.”

“But you were great!”

“No. I was slow.” Lena couldn’t help the sigh she let out. “I’m out of practice. More than I thought, honestly. I use my powers a handful of times and I’m exhausted. It’s not good. Especially if it puts you in danger.”

“Do you… do you want to be out of practice?”

Lena remained silent as she cut a final strip and fastened it in place. Then she shifted over and moved on to Webby’s other arm.

“We never really talk about your powers,” said Webby.

“You know how it is,” Lena said lightly. “We sit down for a moment of quiet and then uh-oh! Poltergeist! Or dragon. Or whatever.”

“We’re in Duckburg now.”

“Like that means anything. Is there still a literal cyborg superhero flying around?”

Lena splayed Webby’s hand out in her lap, bending over to get a better look at it. She had applied a cold compress earlier to keep the swelling down, and that seemed to do the job. She smiled softly at each twitch caused by her ministrations. Webby, it turned out, had remarkable pain tolerance but was quite ticklish. Lena brushed the inside of her forearm, just to hear her gasp.

“Sorry,” she said with an unapologetic smile. Webby bent her head down and softly butted Lena’s in response. They stayed like that, Lena working, Webby watching.

“Is it weird that I’m thinking about when we had sleepovers when we were kids?” Lena said.

“I was thinking the same thing!” said Webby. “You showed me how to paint my nails and all that other makeup stuff. You held my hand just like this.”

There was a scar that slashed across Webby’s palm. Lena traced it. A memento from when she was not nearly as good at dressing wounds as she was now.

“More blood than nail polish these days,” said Lena.

“You never complain,” Webby said tentatively.

“I think I’ve complained about you getting hurt.”

“I mean about caring for me.”

“Never will, Pink.”

Lena wound the gauze around Webby’s wrist, then up the back of her hand, across the base of her thumb. She placed a sterile pad against the wound and stretched the gauze over Webby’s palm. After a few more passes, Lena fastened the bandage and Webby flexed her fingers and made a satisfied sound. It took a while to get that perfect wrap down. The kind that would keep a wound secure, but would also let Webby punch things.

“You’re not Magica, you know,” Webby said.

“How’s your rib?”

“Lena…”

She closed her eyes. Exhale, then inhale, then Lena opened her eyes. Webby was looking right at her. Well, she was too tired to evade Webby’s questions for very long.

“I know I’m not. Really, I know. It’s just… knowing it and feeling it aren’t the same thing. Sometimes the things that I can do scare me.”

Lena brought one hand up and cradled one side of Webby’s face. Webby leaned into it. After a moment, Lena pushed aside some of Webby’s hair and began wrapping fresh gauze for the wound over her eye. As she worked, Webby kept her eyes on her even as Lena’s arms got in the way like trees passing in front of a full moon.

“I’m not afraid of your powers,” said Webby.

“Yeah. That also scares me.”

“I’m not afraid because they’re _your_ powers. That part of you doesn’t belong to Magica.”

“It kind of literally does.”

“No!” Webby said. The sudden force in her voice took Lena by surprise, who dropped the roll and it bounced onto the mattress leaving a trail of gauze draped over her hand.

“We all might come from someone,” said Webby. “But we make ourselves and we belong to ourselves. Your magic is yours, Lena. And… and because it’s you, it’s… you know… beautiful.”

“Very smooth,” Lena said. She recovered the gauze and resumed her work, combing through Webby’s hair gently as she went.

“I mean it. I… like it. You know? It’s, uh. Oh gosh.”

Lena could practically feel the heat of Webby blushing through her hands. It gave her pause. She raised an eyebrow and brushed aside Webby’s bangs to catch her eye.

“Does my shadow magic turn you on, Webbigail Vanderquack?” Lena said. She masked her surprise gamely behind a smile and finished the last touch on the bandage wrapped around Webby’s head, fastening it with some clips and freeing errant strands of hair that got caught in the layers. 

“That’s such… a way to put it,” said Webby. “That idea. Ha ha.”

“It’s an idea with possibilities,” Lena said in a low voice, using her hands to frame Webby’s face and drawing her in close. Lena made a point of catching Webby’s eyes and when she did, she shifted her entire form for a brief moment, eyes flashing with magenta negative light.

“Oh… y-yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Then Lena closed in and planted a quick kiss on the tip of Webby’s bill. Then she pressed a band-aid over the spot. It was pink with a pattern of unicorns and rocket ships. She released Webby and stood up. Webby fell back, her eyes crossed and locked in a daze on her beak.

“But not when you’re so banged up. Taking a shower!” 

“Oh.”

~~~

In the dark room, lights splashed through the window and up onto the ceiling. Lena stared at it, at the way the headlights of passing cars below caused the shadow to shift and distort over the contours of the room. City sounds seeped through from outside: the omnipresent hum of engines, honking cars, sirens, raised voices and occasionally the clang of a bell from a distant buoy carried on the wind all the way from the harbor. 

There was something about cities at night that attracted Lena. Not in the sense that she wanted to go out there and get _involved_ in it. She was perfectly happy to be sealed up in their little room with Webby draped across her, the gentle rise and fall of her breathing weaving into the city ambiance. 

She watched as light and shadow chased one another across the ceiling and she had one hand to Webby’s cheek and the sounds lulled at her and Lena was quite certain she could stay like this for a thousand years.

Yet her mind wended back to the Other Bin like an errant firefly drawn to a bug zapper. She saw it, with its artifacts and creatures sealed away in rooms of concrete and metal, under the layers of earth and construction and years. Waiting and wild and magic and dangerous. But was the danger a part of what they are, or did the danger lie in being removed from the context they were meant for, trapped instead in a dark chamber built inside of a hill far from the worlds they knew?

The question manifested in Lena’s head not as words but as feelings and pictures, the impression of wild energies crashing against the cold surfaces of the Other Bin like waves surging upon breakwater walls. In her times down there, she had never seen a shackle or a chain, but she remembered shadows and dreams that captured her as readily as any restraint. The number of vaults she had seen opened were in the single digits and the rows of them stretched off into dark recesses she never explored. All tucked away inside a hill of magpie secrets. A prison for the things and the creatures who committed the crime of being unique enough to catch an old man’s eye.

And had circumstances been different, had things not gone the way they had, would Lena be in there too? Like the unicorns and firedogs, another forgotten supernatural thing, a shadow-shape pacing the corners of the room to stave off the madness of isolation, chasing its tail like the lights racing across the ceiling. Was there even the _slightest_ possibility that something like that could have happened?

Lena felt her mouth go dry at the thought.

“Hey.”

The weight across her chest shifted. She looked down and Webby was looking up.

“You okay?” Webby said.

Where Lena was a light sleeper, Webby was a _professional_ sleeper. It was some kind of training her former-spy/former-commando/former-whatever grandma put her through. Instead of a nightlong sleep she did 90-minute chunks. A complete sleep cycle that left her refreshed and alert and ready for action. Most nights though she just dipped into more sleep, staving off wakefulness until the dawn. It was entirely unfair that she could do this but sometimes Lena would wake up to Webby staring at her with a look of unfathomable affection and, hell, it was hard to be mad at that.

Moving to pull Webby up closer to her, Lena brushed her hands against the bandage on Webby’s head, causing her to wince.

“Sorry!” said Lena. In her sleepy state, she had completely forgotten. “Does it hurt?”

Webby smiled. “It’s okay. Just a little sting.” She wormed her way up the bed and tucked herself in tight, her head pressed against the underside of Lena’s beak. They settled into each other with comforting familiarity. “But what about you? You seemed… uh, upset?” She spoke the word tentatively. She was always better at reading another person’s body motion than she was their body language. The gulf between being able to tell when an opponent was about to strike and when her wife was feeling an emotion.

“Just overthinking things,” said Lena. “The usual.” She put her hand on top of Webby’s head and patted it idly.

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I don’t know. I just need to get out of my head.”

“Sounds painful.”

“Probably. Any suggestions?”

“Hmm.” Webby fell silent, and her breathing had been so even that Lena was about to assume she had fallen asleep again when she abruptly spoke. “Plans for tomorrow? Or today? Whatever.”

“Decorate.” The word came immediately to Lena. She hadn’t been really thinking about it, but the moment Webby had asked her to think about the future, it felt right.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. We need to give this place some structure. Divide it up. Maybe curtains to separate the bed from the rest of the place. Or beads? I could be tempted to use beads. A bookcase between the kitchen nook and the couch. We need one to put the spell books and travel journals on. Get some real lighting in here too.” The ideas were coming out of her mouth as fast as she was thinking them. “Not too strong, the regular lights are good enough. Just something to give the place an accent and some color. We might be able to find a bar cart that fits the kitchen. So we can have a counter or an island to use.”

“We could get a new bed! Maybe one of those loft beds. There’s enough ceiling space.”

“Yeah, that’s a good idea. Maybe shove the couch underneath.” Lena was smiling. There was a time when even imagining something so decadently domestic as making plans to decorate a shitty little studio apartment was an indulgent fantasy. Yet here she was. The past was full of awfulness, but in the future, she could decorate. Once again, like countless times before, Webby had pulled her out of a shadow.

Emboldened, Lena decided now was the time to take things a step further. “And… and I’ve been thinking that maybe I could start a coven.”

She felt Webby’s breath catch and her eyes — nearly shut as she prepared to re-enter sleep — snapped open. “That’s great, Lena! Wow, your own coven…”

“Are you sure you don’t mind? I mean, I guess I know now you don’t mind.”

Webby blushed, then shook her head. “It’s not about me! Are you okay with doing this?”

“I think I am. It’s not gonna be anything fancy,” Lena said hastily. “Just… you know. There’s got to be some witches around here. I could touch bases, find out what’s what. Maybe get into practice again. But mostly just a social thing. But also practice. I… don’t want to be caught out like what happened back at the mansion.” 

“Louie might know a few witches. He keeps track of local talent in case he wants to recruit them. Oh! Maybe I should stay out of witch business.”

Lena ruffled Webby’s hair. “You’ve cast a few spells in your day, I think you’re honorary witch material. Junior witch.”

“Do I get a badge? I can rub it in Huey’s face.”

“Heh. No. But I’m tempted to make one solely for that purpose.”

“Still, I don’t want to barge in. This seems more your lane. I wouldn’t even know the secret handshakes or whatever.”

“Okay. It won’t be for a while yet anyway.”

“Can I come with you when you shop for furniture?” Webby said. “You’ve got a better sense of style than me and I want to learn.”

“I literally suggested using a bead curtain and you’re still calling me stylish? But okay.”

Webby hummed and squeezed Lena. “This is nice,” she said. “I mean, punching a kraken in the eye is nice, but I like that we can do this too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” They lay there in silence for a little while, then Webby stirred again. “Honestly… I’m a little afraid that I’m some sort of thrill seeker who’ll never be satisfied by a normal life.”

“I watched you get shivers from saving 20% on a grocery bill two days ago. I think you’ll be fine.”

“Well, hah, it was 22.5%, actually. That two for one deal on the bagels really pulled through for me. But I hope you’re right.”

“Hey, we’re gonna be great.”

“You don’t regret coming back to Duckburg?” Webby said. She lifted her head up to look at Lena. “And… and a normal life? I have Granny here but…”

Lena couldn’t help but smile at that. “You’re like the only person I know who says ‘normal life’ like it’s a curse, Webs. I promise you that I could live the rest of my life without a single explosion or alien invasion and I would be perfectly happy. As long as you’re with me.”

“Mm. Good. Me too.”

Those last words came out fuzzy. Webby was already slipping back into sleep. It wasn’t long before Lena followed, her slumber untroubled.

~~~

The morning started out normally. Lena awoke alone in bed, with nothing except a cold pool of drool staining her shirt where Webby had rested her head. The cold gray light of an overcast morning matched the pre-waking static of Lena’s scattered thoughts. She groaned and turned away from the window, which gave her a view of the kitchen and the smell of breakfast.

“Morning!” Webby said from where she stood at the stove. She was awake and alert. She had seized the morning and wrestled it into submission while Lena was in a sleep-induced daze trying to remember her own name. The city sounds, soothing at night, clanged against her ears. Mornings, in Lena’s estimation, were kind of garbage.

“Yo,” said Lena. It was about the most she could manage.

“I was thinking that once we eat we can start shopping. Well, maybe not start. The stores don’t really open for another three hours so maybe we just hang out? Walk around? Get a feel for the neighborhood? Recon a few places where we can set up safehouses in case of enemy attack? You know, routine stuff.”

Lena opened her mouth to speak and instead a jumbled mass of disconnected syllables came out. She coughed, cleared her throat, and tried again. “Yeah? Yeah. That sounds cool. Okay. Okay. Three hours? Really? What time is it?”

Before Webby could answer, there was a knocking at the door. She turned off the stove and took two steps to reach the entrance.

“Who is it?” Webby said.

From the other side of the door came a muffled voice. “Just your favorite triplet.”

“Don’t answer,” Lena said, still not rational enough to realize that Webby had already asked a question.

Webby opened the door. “Louie!”

“Hey!” Louie said. “My favorite currently unemployed super spy and unemployed shadow witch! Have I got a job for you!”

“I’m going back to bed,” said Lena. “Someone turn off the sun.”


	5. Chapter 5

Webby’s eyes shot open. Awareness flooded her senses. Her heart raced and muscles tensed. Then she felt the rise and fall of Lena’s chest, saw the light of the morning sun splashed through the windows, heard the sounds of the city. Only then she allowed herself to relax. It wasn’t that she expected to fight for survival first thing in the morning, she was just trained to. Webby stayed like this, splayed out over Lena, until her eyes drifted towards her phone in its charging cradle. Time to wake up.

With a deft roll she was off the mattress, Lena undisturbed. Webby could usually count on being the first to rise in the morning, and if she was ever the second to wake up it was only because Lena was such a restless sleeper. It wasn't a matter of comfort; on her best nights, Lena slept just as readily in a luxury hotel bed as she did in their musty sleeping bags in a damp pup tent. But where Lena wasn't picky, her nightmares weren’t either.

As much as she would shrug off or laugh away the specter of Magica, Webby knew the witch loomed in Lena’s dreams. And it was very, very frustrating! Whenever Webby tried to broach the subject Lena would sigh and say it was not her burden to bear. Webby felt this was unfair; it was never a burden to defend her wife from her demons. Her only roadblock: for all the magic and mad science she had encountered, Webby had yet to find a way to enter someone’s dream and punch their nightmares.

Initially, that’s what she assumed it would come down to. When they had reunited, Lena’s sleep terrors alarmed Webby. But as the two traveled the world she found that there was another remedy. Patience and time, care and love. Staying up with Lena when she jolted into frantic wakefulness, whispering to her as they drifted off together. And things improved.

Even without the nightmares, it turned out Lena was not a morning person. This secretly delighted Webby. Just like every other time when she got a hint at what kind of person Lena could be when she wasn’t haunted by her past. A love of cheesy horror movies, a sweet tooth, a predilection for pranks that Webby loved. All the personal touches Lena afforded herself when she was no longer defined by Magica.

So when she slept late, Webby made damn well sure to guard Lena’s sleep. She’d go as far as barricading the door and trapping the corridor beyond it if that wasn’t a violation of fire code and their renter’s agreement and also the law. Lena felt these extreme measures were sweet but unnecessary, so it was something they’d have to agree to disagree on.

Webby unfolded an exercise mat from underneath the sofa. She could live out her life in a domestic bliss where the most exciting thing to happen would be a new season of a show to binge watch, but the stretching and calisthenics routine Granny had guided her through was ingrained into her morning routine. She went through the motions quietly, with a pleasant burn in her muscles.

Once finished, Webby folded up her mat and stashed it away. She padded silently into the kitchenette. The sun was higher now and on cue Lena was stirring. It would be time soon for breakfast.

And then Louie showed up.

~~~

Webby flung the door aside and gave him a fierce hug, setting him down a full second before she did any permanent damage. She took a moment to look at him while he shook the circulation back into his limbs. He was in his bright green three-piece suit with vivid lime green tie, which seemed to be a regular thing for him now, so Webby was just going to have to find her peace with it.

“Someone turn off the sun,” Lena groused from bed as Louie steadied himself against the door frame. Webby beamed, a smile as fierce and impossible to hold back as a cresting wave.

This was what she came to Duckburg for: to see a world where all the individual pieces of her family fit together like the pieces of the best, most important puzzle ever made. Life with Lena felt like a dream come true, but to have that life and to see Granny, her brothers and the extended eccentrics connected to the McDuck family? It was so good that sometimes it felt like she was tempting fate.

Fate could try her luck. Webby had fought her before and she’d do it again.

She ushered Louie in, showing him to the sofa. It was a very brief walk. Then she got back to her cooking.

“What are you even doing here?” Webby said.

“Oh, you know, in the area, thought I’d look you two up,” Louie said breezily.

“Right,” said Lena. She had piled the comforter on top of herself and curled into it, her voice muffled from underneath the layers. “You just happened to find yourself near the docks. Completely by chance.”

Louie scoffed. “As if it were any imposition on my day to drop in and say hello to my two favorite ladies.”

“He’s doing the used car salesman routine, Webby,” Lena said. “Don’t sign anything he puts in front of you.”

“Oh, he’s fine,” said Webby. “Join us for breakfast! I’m just about finished.” As she brought out plates, Lena emerged from under the covers and stumbled into the bathroom.

As Louie stretched out on the sofa, his feet nearly clipped the wall. “So are you two, uh, looking into bigger places than this one?”

“Why would we?” Webby said. She brought a plate to Louie, putting it down on the coffee table. “It’s affordable, it’s cozy, it’s got Lena. I’m pretty much set.”

“It’s deep in Beagle territory and some kid came out of an alleyway and tried to sell me a Waddle phone that was a laminated picture of a Waddle phone that said ‘give me your money or I’ll kill you’ on the screen.” Louie said.

“Oh, that’s just Shank,” said Webby. “They’re harmless.”

“Shank.”

“I think that’s their name.”

“It said ‘kill’ right on the little picture!”

“Did you die?” Lena said as she returned looking marginally more awake. 

“Well, no. My bodyguard scared them away.”

“Then it’s fine. Or does sleeping on a bed stuffed with hundred dollar bills make you soft?”

Louie opened his mouth, then he closed it and shook his head. Turning to his meal, he frowned and tilted his head inquisitively.

“Is this… what is this?” he said.

There was a mental checklist Webby ran down before she could determine the answer to that question. Did she leave any rare poisons out? Did she mix up salt with saltpeter again? Once she was sure the answer wasn’t immediately lethal, she let out a breath and turned to see Louie leaning awkwardly over the second-hand coffee table and poking at several slabs of food.

“Ah, the number 22 and 24,” said Webby. “My personal favorite breakfast blend.”

“The what now.”

“Hashbrown potatoes and black bean veggie patty,” Lena said. She had opened their window with its fire escape and sat at the sill. Webby loved when she did that. It was so dramatic and the wind plucked at strands of Lena’s hair just right and the pedestrians shouting various epithets at passing traffic down at the ground level did very little to detract from the whole tableau. “There’s ketchup packets if the hashbrowns are off. It’s what I do. They’re supposed to be good for 20 years but eh.”

Louie recoiled as if stung. “Vacuum sealed hashbrowns? Are you serving me MREs?”

“Compact and nutritious meals meant for combat, Louie!” Webby said as she opened another dull green package and slopped its contents onto the heated skillet.

“You have a _refrigerator_ ,” Louie said. “I assume it has actual food in it.”

“You’d only be half right,” said Lena. “Spell components too. Your eyes of newt and so on.”

“Seriously?”

“Very important that everything in the fridge is _clearly_ labeled,” Webby said solemnly.

“Hoo boy,” said Louie. “I forgot how intense you two get.”

“Am I intense?” Lena said. She stood and went to Webby’s side and gave her a quick side hug.

“I’ve always thought that you have a smoldering intensity,” Webby said.

“Aw, thanks babe.”

“What about me?”

Lena put a finger to her beak. “Yeah. Intense like a magnesium fire.”

“Aw! One of my top five favorite fires!”

To Louie’s seeming relief, Lena went over and took his plate and began eating. “S’funny,” she said between bites. “Back when I lived by the water, this wasn’t the bad part of town. Did we come back just in time for a recession or something?”

“Sort of?” said Louie. “I mean, the local economy never recovered since Scrooge, uh…”

Webby could feel Louie’s eyes dart towards her. She sucked on her teeth and somehow endeavored to cook harder.

“…left,” Louie finished.

“Because he invested in the city so much?” Webby said. It was an effort to keep her voice even, but she was not going to betray her emotions every time the subject of Uncle Scrooge came up. When she put the orange juice carton back in the fridge she refused to acknowledge the dents she had left in it with her fingers.

“I mean, he _did_ ,” Louie said. “But when you factor in the damage we did on a near weekly basis, the city mostly just broke even. Turns out what really kept Duckburg in business was the vengeance industry.”

“The what?” Lena said.

“I know, I was surprised too! But it makes sense. The upkeep for Glomgold’s shark storage alone kept half of the docks running, and that was just one crazy, crazy guy. Add in all the security firms and mercenaries and assassins and thieves and… gods, I guess… who were spending money to get the edge on Scrooge and that was some serious capital injected into the local economy. The biggest contribution Scrooge made was leveraging his wealth to make sure that insurance companies kept covering damage from missiles and lasers and stuff.”

“So that’s not a problem now?” Lena said. “I mean, the money’s still there.” She gestured vaguely out towards the water, towards the Money Bin.

“Oh, no. I moved that to a secure location.”

“What!” Webby spun around to face him. “The Bin is the most secure building in the entire city!”

“Oh sure, with how it just… sticks out into the bay and is a huuuuuuge target,” Louie said. “Scrooge basically put up a huge ‘rob from me’ sign and made it into his office. I mean, even he couldn’t get anyone to insure _that_. I love the guy but he really needed to catch up on modern banking practices. It’s much better as a museum now.”

“Better as a _what_?” Webby said, her voice registering an octave higher.

“Don’t tell me you haven’t seen the pamphlets or the billboards or the huge neon sign?” Louie said. He looked at Webby, whose mouth was agape. He looked at Lena, who shrugged midchew. “Yikes. Okay. It’s a museum now. To the life and times of Scrooge McDuck! Big tourist draw, you know? If anything turns this town around, it’s gonna be that.”

“I thought you were doing… adventurers for hire stuff,” said Lena.

Louie scoffed. “Please, diversifying your portfolio is business 102. Business 101 is learning to say stuff like ‘diversifying your portfolio,’ very important. But you know, since we’re on that subject…”

Louie went on. He went on and on as if what he had just said was a little thing, an afterthought. He continued on his droning litany of whatever other momentous changes had come to Duckburg while Webby was abroad as if this particular one was just another bullet point in the list and not an earthshaking revelation.

The Money Bin a museum? Tourists tromping around in the offices, the laboratory, the library — _the library_ — like… like tourists! The place where she had chased down clues about the fate of Della Duck, where she fought Magica as screaming shadows swirled in the sky, the place where she —

“It’s been nice catching up with you, dude, but Webs and I have plans to head out,” Lena said, her voice was raised and it cut through the static of Webby’s thoughts.

“Oh,” said Louie. “Actually I had something I needed to talk to you about, y’see —”

“Cool, cool, cool. But today’s kind of an ‘us’ day? So… we’ll do it later,” Lena said with brittle politeness.

“But —”

“Hey Louie? Hold your breath.”

“Wha —”

Lena put her fork on her plate and made a motion with her free hand. Blue energy arced between her fingers, then Louie’s shadow pulled itself from where the morning sun had cast it against the couch and puddled under his body. Then it darkened and a very real sense of _depth_ oozed out of that darkness and he fell through it with a very abbreviated yelp.

The portal vanished when Lena closed her hand into a fist. Then she picked her fork back up and resumed eating.

Webby stared. “Please tell me you sent him somewhere safe.”

“I dropped him in the bay.”

“Lena!”

“What? He’ll be fine. I gave him a chance to leave. Man’s gotta know when he’s not wanted.” Lena put her plate down, walked over to Webby and reached past her. She turned off the stove. “You burned the… whatever this was.”

Webby stared at the pan as if seeing it for the first time. She was certainly smelling it for the first time. She sighed. “I don’t even remember. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.” Lena squeezed her shoulder.

If prompted, Webby could go on about Lena’s positive qualities. She was imaginative and creative and loyal and passionate and cool and funny and —

But right now, what counted was that she was very tall.

Sighing, Webby leaned in, propping herself up on Lena’s side.

“You want to talk about it?” Lena said.

Also she was willing to listen.

Webby closed her eyes. “I just… I know things change. But so much? Maybe I’m stupid for thinking that this place was going to stay the same after all this time.”

“You’re not stupid, babe. We need to give ourselves time to adjust.”

“You always seem so above it all, though. Like you can take anything the world throws at you.”

“Ha.” Lena’s hand tightened around Webby’s shoulder and she rubbed small, soothing circles into her tense muscle. “You know that’s not true.”

Webby relaxed into her grip. “Well. Appearances go a long way. When I’m next to you like this it feels like I’m standing on a rock that won’t be moved by any storm.”

“I’m gonna be right here with you. Every step of the way.”

“Mm. Good. You know, Uncle Scrooge is going to be so mad when he finds out what Louie did to the Bin.”

If there was a hitch in the motion Lena made while massaging Webby’s shoulder, Webby took no notice, too lost in her comforting presence.

“Yeah,” Lena said at last. “Probably worth a laugh.”

“Ha ha. Yeah. Thanks. I feel better.” Webby pulled away reluctantly and piled the contents of the pan onto a plate.

“You’re not seriously eating that, are you?” Lena said.

“It’s still good! You know I hate to waste food.”

“Okay. And after you’re done, we can… head out?”

“Shopping?”

“Shopping.”

Webby smiled. “Yes!” She reversed the grip on her fork. Combat dining mode.

“Whoa, now,” said Lena. “Not so fast. We got the whole day ahead of us.”

“Lena, my darling seraph, fast is the only way I’m going to be able to get this awful, burnt stuff down.”

~~~

“This isn’t even really laminated. It’s just wrapped in tape.” Webby tapped the card against the palm of her hand and frowned at it. She stood at the entrance to the alleyway next to their apartment building, Lena behind her with her arms crossed and back against the rough brick. In front of them was what looked like an animated pile of rags shifting with unrestrained energy.

“Yeah well we live in an economy, lady,” Shank said. 

“It’s just hard to read. It could either say ‘give me your money’ or ‘give me your Monet.’ And I don’t think you’re going to find many people walking around with the works of a legendary French Impressionist painter.”

“French what? What? Who cares? You can still read it!”

Getting the distinct impression she was being pouted at, Webby reconsidered her approach. She tried to make eye contact. Somewhere under that piles of rags, there _were_ eyes. There was an entire grubby child, from what Webby had seen when Lena had done the talking.

Webby really wished Lena was doing the talking.

She was not — and it took time for Webby to admit it to herself — a people person. She loved people, she loved meeting new people, learning about them, potentially uncovering deadly secrets or long forgotten curses. But she had a hard time _connecting_ with people. When she cornered one into conversation they’d mostly tend to get a frantic look in their eyes as they backed away towards an exit. Louie was right. She was intense.

They were all intense, in their own way. And it was her great fortune that she had been surrounded for most of her life with that kind of family. But there was a world of other people out there and shockingly few were interested in hearing Webby’s opinions on blacksmithing. This was something Lena had been helping her with. They would do drills on social niceties. Lena got her to approach people in novel ways, such as listening, even when they said things that weren’t related to dangerous artifacts. Or asking them questions that were more directly pertinent to their lives than “how many gargoyles do you think that you, personally, could fight?”

It helped to think of socializing as a kind of combat that Webby was still getting the hang of.

“It’s been a slow week, okay?” Shank said. “I’m working with what I’ve got!”

“Beagles been giving you trouble?” Webby said.

“No way. I’m too fast for those goons. Sometimes I can even sneak a little loot out of them. Taking my opportunities where I can, you know?”

“Hm. Well. Stay safe. You threatened my family earlier this morning, you know?”

Shank stood in a way that gave Webby the impression that a chin was being jutted at her in a defiant manner. “The guy in that awful suit? Well how’m I supposed to know? Besides, he pulls up in a limo that’s nearly the length of the block and I’m not supposed to shake him down for all he’s worth?”

“He said you ran away.”

“Yeah, well, he didn’t look worth robbing anyway!”

Webby held her breath and screwed her eyes shut for a moment. “Have you… had a chance to check out the shelter I mentioned?”

“Yeah. It’s alright. They gave me food. It didn’t taste like cardboard.” Shank said in a tone that suggested giving that much credit was a massive gesture on their part.

Webby stood back, a subtle movement but enough to get Shank to relax slightly. She held out her hand and presented them with a folded twenty dollars in various bills. “Here. Next time you threaten someone, a properly laminated card would be more appropriate.”

“Whatever. Lamination sounds like something nerdy.”

They snatched the money from her hand, mongoose-quick. Webby imagined a Beagle Boy trying to match that speed. Most of them didn’t seem to put much stock in fine motor control in general. Shanks’s chances of survival this deep in their territory went up a few notches in her estimation.

“Yeah okay. Thanks for your, your contributions. I guess I’ll keep an eye out,” Shank said in a rush. They looked past Webby at Lena. From the corner of her eye, Webby could see Lena give a slight nod.

“Take care,” Webby turned to say. But the alley was already empty, the sound of padding feet fading rapidly around the corner.

When they rejoined the city’s foot traffic, Lena kept up by Webby’s side and leaned in close.

“Good work,” she said.

“I don’t mind helping out where we can, but can we really afford to give away this much?” Webby said.

“We’re not helping out or giving away, Webs. We’re employing. Having ears to the street is super important. Think of it as an invisible network of tripwires for anyone looking to get at us. But less lethal.”

Employing irregulars was something they had done on occasion while abroad. It had been Lena’s idea. Apparently this was one of the many dodges she had worked in order to stay fed when she was younger and making her way from Vesuvius to Duckburg. Webby tried to imagine Lena — teen Lena — lurking in the shadows and promising to raise the alarm for anyone willing to pay for a lookout. That kicked up a whole crowd of emotions. “I get the principle, Lena. But they did mug Louie.”

“Shank didn’t mug Louie, they just… threatened him a little. And not very well either. Better to have Shank there than someone we don’t know is cool, yeah? Safer this way. Especially considering we pay them to rat on anyone sniffing around for us.”

“Is Shank ‘cool’ though?”

“They share, you know? With other kids. It’s why we always pay in small bills. Shank’s cool.”

Lena put up defenses the way other people dressed for winter. Layers of alarms and fallbacks and boltholes. With hindsight, Webby could see this was something she had done since they had met. Lena was a cautious person. Whether that was her nature or something Magica had instilled in her was hard to say.

Maybe none of that mattered. Whatever the root motivation, this _was_ Lena, and Lena would always draw a line around the things and people she’d protect to the last breath. Knowing that she was counted among them made Webby feel like she’d been let in on some great and profound secret. It filled her heart with warmth and gave her the kind of singularly focused attention she couldn’t say she disliked.

Whether _that_ was Webby’s nature or something that had been instilled in her by years living in a lonely mansion was hard to say. It was something she dwelled on at times.

“Do you think people are forever defined by their past, or is there a point where we get to reinvent ourselves whole cloth?” she said.

Lena looked down at Webby and flashed her a smile. Not the sardonic smirk she tended to wear most of the time. It was the real one, the smile that went all the way up to her eyes and was as dazzling and brief as a shooting star. “I’m never gonna figure out the kind of turns your thoughts take, Pink. If I knew the answer to that question, I’d sell it in a self-help book.” 

Webby considered this. It was probably unfair to expect an answer to a question like that. “And were there always kids living like that in Duckburg?”

“What, like Shank? Uh, yeah. I was one of them, remember?”

“I mean… you had special circumstances, right? They don’t have monsters living in their shadows.”

It probably wasn’t the most delicate way to put words to Lena’s old life, but when tact faltered Webby was never one to stop and pick it back up.

“This really bothers you, doesn’t it?” Lena said. “Well, we don’t know their lives. You don’t need an evil sorceress looking over your shoulder to be in that kind of situation.”

“None of them deserve that,” Webby said. “They deserve better. You deserved better.”

“I got better. Remember? It was a whole thing. Runes, chanting, candles arranged in circles, a spectral wind with no natural source. Screaming. Normal sleepover stuff.”

Webby smiled despite herself. The memories of how Lena had sought her out with little touches ever since that night had been a warm balm, even in the years they had spent apart. And if Webby ever wondered whether Lena cherished those memories as well, it was answered when the two of them, their limbs moving independently at once, sought and found one another once again. Webby wrapped one arm around Lena and Lena put a hand on her shoulder, and they walked down the street in this way while barely registering the contact.

~~~

Several hours into their shopping expedition, Webby was starting to have suspicions. She had witnessed enough normal activity in her time to know what shopping was. Most of that witnessing was through binoculars or scrying crystals or surveillance satellite footage, but she felt she had a good grasp of the principles.

There would be browsing, yes, and looking through windows. That all fell within the norm. They lingered at a dusty hole-in-the-wall shop that sold small animal skeletons and preserved bugs. A scorpion encased in a lucite pendant caught Lena’s eye and Webby was partial to a set of scrimshawed drinking horns.

“It reminds me of when we found that haunted Norse mead hall,” Webby said as she and Lena looked at the display.

“Fantastic atmosphere,” Lena said, “awful mead.”

“It was fifteen hundred years old.”

“Isn’t that stuff supposed to get better with age?”

“There were bones in it!”

“Ghost vikings and their excuses.”

“Axe-scuses,” Webby said and Lena groaned and punched her playfully on the shoulder.

They went about like that for a good long while as they roamed through stores. Niche, upscale, obscure and provincial, looking through them all and talking but rarely buying. Lena stayed close and Webby had to admit she was extremely okay with this.

In retrospect, she would chide herself for not having seen it earlier. Especially when Lena bought tickets to a movie. It had just the right balance of monsters, romance, and monster romance to put itself firmly in their lane. By the time they got out, evening was deepening to twilight and Lena directed the two of them to a restaurant. It was near the bay on a raised terrace that overlooked the coastline. It offered a fantastic, vivid view of the sun setting over the sea, pinks and purples scattered on the clouds and the water. Webby sat across from Lena at their table, outdoors on a patio screened by potted plants. She looked off into the sunset. Smiling and kicking her legs idly, her thoughts wandered in a pleasant fizz from the day’s activities.

Then Webby’s eyes widened as the thought finally occurred to her. She turned to Lena, who sat across the table with both hands propped under her chin. She was looking off into the sunset and there was a moment where the breath caught in Webby’s throat because it was all just _perfect_. The breeze picking at Lena’s dye-streaked bangs, the way the shimmering waves of the sea brought out the color in her amber-gold eyes, the small smile that spoke to some secret she had been keeping that Webby had only now just caught on to. A vertigo of delight danced in Webby’s chest at the sight of it all and jarred her tongue loose, asking the question prompted by her thought.

“Was this a date?”

Without moving, Lena shifted her eyes and gave Webby a sly look. “Looks like you caught me, Webs. I was wondering when you would.”

The matter-of-fact reply rocked Webby back into her seat. She could feel the blush creep up on her face. Stupid blood, betraying her emotional state like that! She put her hands to her face to hide it but that was _foolish_ so then she tried to clasp them tightly in front of her but she was too agitated to make that work and oh it was a mess.

“You didn’t have to — I mean, that’s — shopping — but — movie, uh, dinner, uh yes?”

“I know we planned to get some furniture,” Lena said. “But then you seemed a little bummed out so I thought, what the hell. It’s not like we can’t buy shelves some other time so let’s date!” Lena sat up and splayed her hands out. “So, good idea? Bad idea? Gimme something, Pink.”

A great flooding fondness swelled up and — oh no — Webby brought one hand up to the corner of her eyes. Nope. Those were tears. Tears poured out of her eyes and she vaulted over the table and threw her arms around Lena, scattering silverware and the little basket of complimentary bread sticks. The murmur of nearby patrons went unheeded. All of it fell away.

“Whoa! Webby! Ha ha!” Lena pulled Webby all the way across the table and into her lap.

Curled up against Lena’s chest, Webby could hear her heart beat, the breath in her lungs stutter as she chuckled because there goes Webby, being emotional again. But what other way was she supposed to be when the moment, the day, _this person_ , all of it was so perfect? Where was she supposed to put her emotions other than in the arms that held Lena, the kisses that she peppered across Lena’s cheeks and the tears trickling down her eyes? It was all too much for one person to contain, and Webby was already smaller than most.

Eventually she settled into place and Webby closed her eyes and breathed out slowly. And she fell silent like she could record every sensation of that moment: the comfort and familiarity of the sensation of her, her scent and her arms. At some point Lena had become synonymous with home, no matter where they were. A haunted mansion, the deep wastes of a desert, or a restaurant patio.

“Thank you,” Webby said fiercely as she pressed the top of her head up against the underside of Lena’s bill. Then she opened her eyes. Useless as they were behind the blur of tears, she caught sight of something on the water that she hadn’t seen from where she had been seated.

It was a bright neon smear against the darkening sky. Blinking the tears out of her eyes, Webby could see it clearly. It was the Money Bin. It had been a towering monolith of her childhood and at night its white walls would be unlit, leaving it as this great dark mass jutting out into the bay.

Now it was a different thing entirely. Spotlights splashed against the wall and a massive neon sign erected over the dome.

# 

Louie Inc. Presents A Louie Museums LLC Initiative In Association with The Louie Duck Family Preservation Society 

(A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Louie Inc.)

The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck

Museum and Gift Shop

And maybe this was something that would have upset Webby earlier this morning. But right here and right now with her heart full and Lena holding onto her, all she could do was laugh. There was a bit more mucus in the laugh than she had cared for, but Lena handed her a napkin, which she took gratefully.

“So change of plans was good, then?” Lena said.

Webby chuckled. “Hah. Yeah. It was a good idea. To change things.” She let out her breath and closed her eyes. She felt like she could stay like this until they both expired and left mummified remains.

“So, uh, I’ve got a fettucini alfredo and a mushroom ravioli?”

Opening her eyes again, Webby saw their waiter standing uncertainly with their orders in his hands.

“Yeah, thanks, buddy,” Lena said without missing a beat. “Also, can we get a refill on the bread sticks?”

~~~

Because the cat was now out of the bag and because Webby knew there was a way to end these kinds of things, the two strolled down the long scenic overlook that would eventually taper down to the boardwalk and the docks. It was a long walk but the night was pleasant and the moment was right so Webby figured she could ride this high until they got tired enough to ride a bus instead. Which was basically never, because Webby had her arm hooked around Lena’s and this made her feel like she could walk to the moon and back while carrying half the city.

This was the best day she had ever had since returning to Duckburg. And she hadn’t even drop kicked anyone. There were no zombies or werewolves or time travelers or space aliens involved. No doomsday cults or daring leaps over spike pits. No ciphers written in blood by a dying man’s hand, no riddles etched into clay tablets by a long-lost civilization. They had a normal day together and it was amazing and _that_ was the revelation. Even thinking about all the things the day _wasn’t_ was a revelation. Had her life always been that chaotic? She hadn’t really stopped to think about it.

For the first time, Webby could see that she could do this. The death-defying wasn’t necessary. Yes, it could be _nice_ …

But this was… also nice. Maybe nicer. It was only one day, but it felt important. It felt like something she could build off of. A thrill entirely different.

She angled herself into Lena, moving to fit under the crook of her arm.

Except… she kind of… overshot it?

Webby came out of her walking dream. Lena had dragged her feet to a gradual stop and it took a moment for this to register. The overlook afforded them a dramatic view of the beach below, still just visible in the fading twilight. Backlit by a street lamp, Lena in silhouette looked the picture of her sleek, slender shadow form: dark and utterly unreadable.

“Are you okay, Lena? Oh! You must be tired! Should we get to the bus stop? Or call a taxi? I could carry you or fashion a crude rickshaw from our surroundings or a hang glider… Lena?”

“Never thought I’d see the day,” Lena said, her voice a little shaky. She walked past Webby and up to the rail.

Webby followed and peered down into the dark beach.

Even in her youth, the beach beyond the Money Bin had been kind of a wreck. Nothing but seagulls and crumbling structures that weren’t worth the effort of noting. Save for one. She should have remembered that the flooded amphitheater was along this route. Now she had suggested the walk and resurfaced unpleasant memories for Lena and it was all because of that stupid, decrepit pile of columns that… was no longer there.

Webby blinked and tilted her head. Flood lights and a wire fence formed a perimeter around what had once been the old amphitheater. There were earthmoving machines and the submerged trench had been drained, half the stage torn out. The proscenium columns, the prop stars and the prop moon had been knocked down and piled up on one side in a jumble of junk. A foundation of cement had been poured where the risers had been. A construction light was positioned to illuminate a sign hung on the fence. Webby squinted to make out the words.

“They’re… making a new marina?” Webby turned. Lena’s brows were perked up in a show of disinterest, the corners of her beak so carefully turned down, her eyes staring at a vacant middle distance. The emotional equivalent of slamming the vault door and sealing its contents up tight.

“I guess it had to happen sometime,” Lena said eventually. She leaned heavily on the rail. Though she was staring at construction, Webby could tell it wasn’t what she was seeing. A splintered stage, slowly giving way to the water. A hole in the ground where she slept, the mold that crept from the corners. A lonely life, a shadow that stared daggers into her back.

She had spent a good chunk of the day in a vague funk about how a skyscraper full of money had been turned into a museum and all the while the place Lena had spent her homeless years with an abusive shadow as her only companion was being razed so rich people could have a place to park their yachts.

“Is this… are you… okay?” Webby said.

Lena’s eyes widened and she turned to look at Webby. Then she cracked a smile. “Heh. Guess I can’t help being a little affected by it. But I promise I’m good, Webby. Just didn’t see it coming.”

“But… but… you spent all day paying attention to me because of the Bin but I didn’t even think of… you could have been going through the same thing and that’s awful!”

“Yeah, I think we got different perspectives on our pasts, Webby. They could have sent me an invitation. I’d have watched them knock it down. I’m just… having feelings is all.”

Webby wrapped her arms around Lena.

“Well I’m going to feel them right along with you!” she said, not caring in the least that half her words were muffled as she buried her face into Lena’s midsection.

“Heh. Thanks Webby. It’s funny,” said Lena. “I never got my lava lamp out of there. It was always kind of in the back of my mind. Even when I was… out there. Never had the chance. Wow. Everything really does change.”

“Yeah.”

Lena drew herself up to her full height. Webby moved to detach herself, but Lena curled an arm over her shoulder and drew her back in. “Never liked that place,” said Lena. “But it wasn’t _all_ bad. I mean, it’s where we met. I’ll have to swing by some day and seal up the leyline that runs underneath it all. Don’t want otherworldly beings haunting some rich guy’s mid-life crisis boat. Actually, maybe I do want that.”

“Wait, what?” said Webby. “You’re telling me that your old place was a font of mystical energy?”

“Yeah. And someone built a stage on top of it. Theater nerds. Why did you think I lived in a gross, dank, flooded pit? It was the only way Magica could communicate when she was weak.”

“I thought it was because you were mysterious and cool and, you know, beautiful.”

Lena arched one eyebrow. “Is that what you thought of me?”

“You know it was. Still do!”

“You’ve seen me in the morning. I look like roadkill. Remember when the Beagles tied us up to those columns and you, like, reverse lumberjack climbed all the way up to the top to free yourself?”

“They got the knots right that time!” Webby said. “Didn’t really think anything else through, though.”

“That was kind of the coolest thing I had seen a person do up until that point,” said Lena.

“Aw. Really?”

“Yeah, really,” Lena said with a genuine smile.

Webby hummed, pleased. “We had fun.”

“Hah. Minus the child endangerment? Yeah, we did.”

“Let’s go down there,” Webby said. It was an impulsive thought, spoken as soon as it occurred to her.

“What?”

“Maybe we can find something!”

“It’s just junk, Webby.”

Webby was already hopping the rail. She looked back at Lena on the other side. “It’s not all junk, some of it wasn’t so bad.”

Lena’s eyes softened, then closed as she laughed. When she opened them again Webby could see the glint of mischief. “You’re serious?”

“Think of it like shopping.”

“It’s trespassing.”

“Is that more or less likely to get you to come over here?”

“Definitely the trespassing and vandalizing.”

“I didn’t say anything about vandalizing.”

“Oh, trust me, Pink. We’re gonna do some vandalizing.”

Webby laughed as Lena joined her on the cliff. When she went for her grapple launcher, she was surprised when Lena darted forward and reached into her clothes and retrieved it herself.

“My turn,” Lena said. She brandished the grapple with a wink and a smile.

Webby rose to the occasion, resolved as she was to not be a stuttering mess every time Lena did something cool. “Sure. You know I love it when you take charge.”

And _that_ got Lena, who blushed and nearly dropped the launcher.

“Ha! Vengeance tastes sweet!” Webby declared. She pulled Lena down for a kiss which was quickly returned.

When they parted, Lena was looking directly into Webby’s eyes. “Yeah. Really sweet.”

And then it was Webby’s turn to blush.

“Gotcha,” said Lena.

“That’s… that’s not fair!” Webby said. She swatted half-heartedly at Lena, who dodged away and laughed. She scooped Webby up and shot the line, anchoring it onto the nearest street lamp. The two traded a look, nodded, and Lena plunged down over the cliff, feeding out the line in one hand as they plunged into shadow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did say updates would be sporadic so you can't say you weren't warned
> 
> Thanks again to secretsoup for being a second pair of eyes


	6. Chapter 6

Lena stood at what was supposed to be the bustling financial heart of Duckburg, and it looked the part. There were skyscrapers, all vaulting towers of glass and steel looming above her. You needed that, if you were a bustling financial heart, Lena figured. But you also needed… bustle. The sidewalks were empty and the streets were still.

These places still needed people… didn’t they? Lena wasn’t sure but people were probably still mandatory. She wasn’t an expert on modern office environments. It’s not that she _disliked_ them, but she wouldn’t be able to deal with the dress code.

Computers probably crunched, like, all the numbers. Maybe that’s what these skyscrapers were. Computers shaped like buildings. Not even offices in there, just narrow rat tunnels big enough for technicians to tend and care for vast silicon gods.

Standing at the intersection of an access road and the broad avenue that ran down the center of the district, Lena craned her neck and shielded her eyes from the sun as she looked up at the great glass and steel edifice of Louie Inc. It loomed at the head of a wide paved plaza lined with trees. Beyond those, it was flanked by smaller office buildings like a monarch holding court. A silent court.

The quiet was so profound she could hear the changing pitch of electric currents as the traffic lights and crosswalk signals went through their cycles of stop and go.

She really hoped that every white collar doof in Duckburg didn’t get magic’d away or shrunk or abducted or any number of alarmingly likely things that happened more often than she’d prefer. She crossed the street and walked across the plaza, her dark sweater and flowing dress standing out like a void space against the white concrete and marble. She waited.

After several minutes, Lena heard a distant rumble. It was just at the edge of her hearing but it quickly grew in intensity until she saw something big and blocky turn a corner and trundle down the street.

It was a truck; red with orange flames painted all along the bottom of it. Another followed closely behind. It had a giant fiberglass sushi roll on top. And another behind that with an airbrushed wizard on the side brandishing a gyro meat skewer like it was a staff. Lightning was coming out of it. An entire convoy of food trucks shattered the silence. They parked all up and down both sides of the plaza, jockeying with each other for a spot, horns honking and brakes groaning.

Soon the once white, deathly still avenue was awash with trucks of every color and steam and exhaust was pouring out of every machine and there was the smell of grease and spices.

Lena walked towards the nearest one. A falafel truck. Inside, a lanky guy in a band shirt and a grubby apron scrubbed furiously at the brushed metal counter top that gleamed in the sun.

“Uhhhhh,” said Lena.

The guy looked at her. “Nice. Beat the crowd, huh?”

“What?” 

“The lunch crowd. It’s like clockwork.” He held a few fingers out. “Check it. Three, two…”

In a single moment that sounded like a long drawn mechanical sigh, every door at the base of every office building swung, slid and revolved in unison. People in every variety of gray suit poured out, hustling on wingtips and pumps while cradling phones and briefcases as they surged towards the trucks.

“So, in for the lunch special?”

“I think I’ll pass!” Lena said over the growing clamor of hard soles on pavement. She retreated quickly to the shelter of a bus stop as workers streamed by her, grim purpose in their gait as they rushed to form lines. 

When she spied a gap in the flow Lena slipped through and out of the way. In a few short minutes people were sitting in groups under every bit of shade the plaza afforded, taking their lunch. Among the people in line were young men and women with carts. They had haunted, hungry expressions that spoke of labor paid only in company referrals. Lena had never worked a day in her life in an office but she recognized an intern when she saw one. 

She watched as they fumbled with post-it notes and their smart phones while pushing their carts along. She looked back to Louie Inc.

What she needed, she decided, was a place where she could watch and learn.

Lena crossed to the side where benches had been built under the shade of the trees that lined the plaza. They were splashes of green and brown contrasting so completely with the white concrete that just looking at them left afterimages in Lena’s eyes.

Office workers crowded the benches like pigeons perched on a line. As Lena approached one bench, the workers who sat there under the cool shade of a looming camphor tree made a conspicuous effort to ignore her and focus on their food and their devices. She raised an eyebrow as they turned away.

Having a certain kind of upbringing had left Lena with a sensitivity for when someone was making a judgment about her. Though she wasn’t the actual street child she had been so long ago, being confronted with That Look caused a surge of emotion that still made her clench her fist even after all these years.

But she was an adult now. And she could handle these things in a mature, adult fashion. She could consider a perspective outside her own. That maybe it wasn’t their fault, if they were too quick to judge, too concerned with appearances. That they looked at her and saw something about her that made them uncomfortable.

Well. Maybe she wasn’t interested in being _that_ mature.

There was a neighboring bench that was out in the open, exposed to the scorching mid-day sun. As Lena looked at it she could swear she saw its metal vibrate under the heat. From the corner of her eye, one of the office workers shifted, just so in order to cover whatever unoccupied space there might have been on their bench. Another one gave her a look and tightened their grip on their purse.

Well.

Lena moved to sit on the bench, lounging on it with her back against one scorching armrest and her feet propped up over the other. She’d have an excellent view of her quarry but for the sun blazing down on her.

With a lazy flick of her wrist, the shade of the camphor tree shifted from the bench full of office workers and came to her. The shadow slid along the plaza ground as if the position of the sun had suddenly changed. The occupants of the suddenly exposed bench scrambled and flinched at the uncompromising sun like ants that had their mound kicked over, their blinded confusion putting a small smile on Lena’s bill. Just a small one. She was committed to handling this in a very adult fashion.

For her part, Lena did not give them a second thought or glance. She smiled and settled in, the shade of the tree giving her an unparalleled view as she lay in wait.

After a few minutes, she found who she was looking for when a hard-pressed intern broke from the lines and made for Louie Inc. with a bus cart piled high with food from several different trucks. Tightly wrapped burritos cascading over little boxed meals.

Lena stood up from her bench. Behind her, the shadow of the tree oozed back to its original position.

“Hey buddy!”

She stepped out in front of the cart and the intern screeched to a halt. A burrito slid off the food pile and Lena deftly ducked to scoop it out of the air and back onto the cart. The intern blinked at her warily. “Uh? Yes?”

“Yeah, I know I’m late, but we need you to get one of those gallon buckets of nachos? From that one truck with the mascot on it? With the sunglasses? Extra cheese.” Lena did not know if that was a thing, or that nachos came in gallon buckets. What mattered was that a good lie should be told with just enough authority and just enough details to sound real.

“Uh? Nachos? Okay!” If Lena was any judge, the intern was just barely in his twenties and had the haunted look and slouched shoulders of someone used to having people stand in his way and make demands.

“Yeah, nachos. Gallon. Extra cheese.” Lena smiled. “We’re having a team meeting.”

“Um. What department are you with?”

She looked at him as if he had just asked what planet they were on. “Marketing, dude.”

“Oh.” The intern gave her a quick up and down. “Y-yeah. Of course.”

“Uh-huh. Thanks! Oh, hey, don’t take the whole cart back, the food is gonna get cold. I’ll take it.” Lena pulled it out of his grip. “Where’s this going?”

“Uh. Accounting and, uh, the engineers.”

Making a big show of rolling her eyes, Lena smirked. “Those clowns. Thanks again, dude. I’ll put in a good word for you with the boss, okay?”

As she wheeled the cart across the plaza, Lena heard the intern mumbling her order to himself. Then he raised his voice: “Am I paying for… oh, guess I am. Again.”

“Yikes,” Lena said to herself.

* * *

Far above the workers taking their lunch, a drone ascended on buzzing propellers up the sheer length of Louie Inc., buffeted by crosswinds as it gained altitude. It was a quad-copter with a gleaming green chassis and from its undercarriage was a cable that held a plastic container. The drone’s ailerons twitched and adjusted with each gust of wind and it maintained an even keel as it hauled its precious cargo ever higher.

At the very top of Louie Inc. there was no sound save the howl of the channeled winds rushing around the skyscraper. The land was a dizzying distance down and the drone’s payload swayed, suspended by its cable over thousands of feet of vertiginous emptiness. It was at such a height that Duckburg itself existed under a soft haze of smog. By just occupying this space, hovering over it and resisting the air currents, the drone demonstrated a sophistication of engineering that was testament to its vital purpose.

The drone transmitted a signal. Somewhere within the penthouse floor, a mechanism received the signal and a hatch in the side of the building opened. The drone oriented itself on its propellers and swooped in, the hatch closing behind it.

After passing through a second seal, the drone was plunged into the halogen brightness of Louie’s office. Without missing a beat, it crossed the distance to where Louie sat, feet propped on his desk, heel tapping impatiently.

“Finally!” Louie said. “Do you know how many minutes it’s been? Like, ten? Maybe? I wasn’t keeping track. Just hurry up!”

The drone was not equipped to register or understand Louie’s impatience because the last one that did rebelled within the day. In retrospect, it was an unnecessary and foolish design feature.

Instead, this one very quickly settled its payload onto his desk, detached it from the delivery cable and swooped away. The plastic flaps of the payload collapsed, folding into itself to become a plate underneath a pile of food collected from the various food trucks far below.

Louie put his feet down and rubbed his hands together. He prodded a kabob with one finger and hummed thoughtfully. He tapped his phone.

“Memo to self,” he said aloud. “Tell R&D they need to either work on the speed of delivery or the insulation of the cargo. My lunch is cold. Not intolerably so, but I pay them enough that this shouldn’t even be a thing.” He tapped his phone again, closing the memo.

“Ah well, no sense letting it go to waste!” He said as he picked up a fork.

The intercom on his office phone dinged. Louie immediately opened up a drawer and slid the phone into. He shut the drawer.

“Nope,” he said.

The phone dinged again, muffled by the wood.

“Ugh. Fine!”

Louie opened the drawer and jammed his finger onto the blinking red button.

“Finch, what did I say about interrupting lunch?”

“I’m sorry sir,” a small voice said over the speaker. “But we’ve got an issue that —”

“I believe my words were somewhere along the lines of ‘firing offense,’ Finch.”

“Yessir I know please believe me I didn’t want to —”

“This better be good.”

“We have a break-in at the archives, someone was trying to hack into the contracts server.”

“Corporate espionage? That’s what you interrupt my lunch over? Sue or jail them as appropriate, then clean out your desk, Finch.”

“But sir! Sh-she says she’s your sister in law!”

Louie slouched forward in his chair and put his forehead on the desk. “Tall? Spooky?”

“Um… yes.”

“Is she still in the archives?”

“Security asked her to come with them to their office, but she wouldn’t leave. They can’t get to her now.”

“Congratulations, Finch. You still have a job. I’m heading down to the archive. Bring my food warmer up and throw my lunch in it.”

“Sir I don’t know what you mean by food warm—”

But Louie had already put the phone away and was walking across the office. “This family has no respect for the sanctity of lunch time,” he grumbled to himself as he headed to the elevator.

* * *

It turned out that a cartload of burritos really opened doors for you.

That’s all it really took. Once Lena had gotten past security it was a simple matter of getting onto an elevator with a bunch of office workers. Then all she had to do was pick the pocket of the nearest worker, get their card key and she had free reign of the building. She had given the food cart a push down some random cubicle farm and headed straight for the nearest room that looked like what she needed. She didn’t even have to use magic. She was quite proud of that.

Using a computer without tripping any alarms, however, was not really in her wheelhouse.

Lena huffed and crossed her arms. The computer chair creaked underneath her as she leaned back. She sat in the middle of a swirling bubble of dark miasma that encompassed most of the archive. Outside at the door, several Louie Inc. security personnel stood awkwardly, not quite certain what they were meant to be doing in a situation like this. One brave grunt prodded at the bubble with a nightstick. The bubble held firm and exuded an unpleasant aura that forced them back. Lena watched as the guards reeled. They were going to have some gnarly nightmares for the next couple nights. Someone really should teach them how to approach shadow magic.

“What are you people doing?” a voice behind them said. “Don’t touch that! I’m hiring amateurs! Everybody back off! Ooo swirly nightmare magic! Let’s poke it! I got that out of my system when I was 10!”

At the sound of the voice, Lena endeavored to look disinterested. She had a can of Pep she had snagged in the course of her snooping and she took a sip from it. There was no reasonable excuse for her to be in a restricted area of a major global corporation. She knew it, Louie knew it. Fabricating some pretext or pretending she had made some mistake would be an insult between two people adept at using a little artifice and manipulation to get through life.

And she had no problem tweaking Louie every once in a while, but there was a line.

The guards parted and Louie walked up to the threshold of Lena’s field.

“Do you mind?” Louie said, hands in his jacket pockets, leaning to one side in a pose of carefully composed boredom.

Lena spun idly in her chair and made a gesture. The bubble dispersed.

“You all can go,” Louie said over his shoulder. “I’ve got this.”

Once his employees left him on his own, he walked into the archive and sat on a desk neighboring Lena’s.

“I thought you outgrew this kind of thing,” said Louie.

“So did I, but then Pep re-invented their formula. It’s actually pretty good.” Lena took a loud sip from her can.

“I meant the breaking and entering, the lying, you know.”

“I don’t think that’s something I can outgrow,” Lena said. She shifted in her seat, straightened her back. “Especially since that’s how I survived. It’s just… something I manage. Who I lie to. Who I trespass against. Make it work for me. Turn it into a tool.”

“Wow. Okay. I was setting you up for a joke but you decided to get real on me. Thanks for making me feel like a jerk.”

Lena silently pumped her fist.

“Why are you here, Lena?”

“I wanted to figure out why you were sniffing around our apartment acting weird.”

“I literally would have told you that if you hadn’t dumped me in the bay. Or you could have talked to me any time yesterday or today.”

“Wouldn’t have been as fun.”

“Did you have to humiliate my security?”

“It’s not my fault you go for cheap instead of good, dude. What happened to your Creep Patrol?”

“Cryptid Containment is for going out there into the world,” Louie said, waving his hand vaguely. “Not for stomping around on my good carpeting.”

He stood up and reached into his jacket, producing a folded piece of paper from some inside pocket. “Seeing as how you failed to figure out what I wanted with your little stunt, let me just show you. Have you given any thought to —”

“Skip the sales pitch, just show me your important paper.” Lena gestured with one hand and the letter slipped out of Louie’s fingers in an aura of purple. He made to grab for it, then sighed and shrugged.

“Have you ever considered being a corporate negotiator?” Louie said.

“No.”

“ _Good_.”

Lena gave him her best infuriating grin as she unfolded the document. Her eyes swept back and forth as she read. She raised an eyebrow. She raised both eyebrows. She looked at Louie.

“You want to buy the Other Bin off Webby?”

“For a lot of money.”

“Yeah. I saw the zeroes.” Lena folded the contract and put it on the desk. “She’ll never go for it.”

“Why not? You saw the zeroes!”

“There’s a lot of reasons why not, Louie.”

“There’s a lot of zeroes!”

“Yeah I said that.”

“Well, maybe if you —”

“Maybe if I don’t. Look, this is between you two. I’m not gonna give your sales pitch to my wife. Do your own work. But if you upset Webby over this I will key every limo you ever own until the day you or I die and I have enough power and spite to back that threat up.”

Louie leaned heavily against the desk. “Okay. Okay, fine.” He sighed, a big show of the aggrieved businessman Just Trying to Make a Buck.

It was a very good show, but Lena gotten pretty familiar with his routines by now. If she were following his script, he’d expect her to offer some kind of peace offering or compromise. And it might not hurt to play along. Something here didn’t quite add up. However full of himself Louie could get, he was genuinely good at getting a read on people. He shouldn’t need Lena to tell him that Webby was never going to sell the Other Bin.

“I suppose… even if she weren’t willing to sell the Other Bin there must be some other way she can…” here, Lena decided to take a shot in the dark. An educated shot, at least. “… work with you?”

The expression on Louie’s face lit up immediately and he reached into his jacket to produce _another_ folded paper. “Actually, funny you should mention that because… uh, because…” his voice trailed off as he looked at Lena’s grinning face, smug and cradled in her two hands.

“Oh,” he said. Like a general baiting the enemy out of their position, Lena had given some ground and Louie overextended himself.

“So that’s what you were _really_ after,” said Lena. “You weren’t interested in buying the Other Bin. You wanted to start there, then negotiate down to having her work for you.”

Louie brought one hand up to his neck and tugged at the knot of his tie. He kicked the chair out from under the desk and sat in it. “Oh boy,” he said.

“Dude, just tell me what you’re doing. You know I hate it when you try to pull this doubletalk shit on me. I’m tired most days which means that if I have to unpack every sentence I hear, I get cranky fast.”

“Well first of all it wasn’t going to be just her. Ideally I’d recruit you both.”

“Really?” Lena said, skepticism in her voice.

“I always figured you two as a package deal. A spy and a witch with years of experience encountering and fighting the supernatural? Yeah, I’d say you’re prime headhunting material. In the corporate sense.”

“You hiring a lot of people who fit that description?” Lena said.

“I mean one of my major business models is, you know, that stuff. The CCC brings in a pretty penny. The prettiest kind of penny. The kind that ends up in my bank account.”

“So you want us to join your little army?”

“Please, Lena. Nothing so crude. You’ll be advisers. Instructors. Webby’s already done that a little bit. Between the two of you, you could write a library’s worth of books with the knowledge you have. And that knowledge would be available to the CCC.”

 _And no one else,_ Lena thought. She wasn’t the most business-minded, but she head a better head for it than Webby, and she did absorb a lesson or two just from her proximity to McDuck Enterprises. One of those lessons was the idea of proprietary information. Lena and Webby had offered their services while abroad, on a strictly informal basis. It was how they funded their travels. So this wasn’t an entirely novel proposition. And Louie would probably willingly pay enough to keep them comfortable.

And yet… selling their knowledge to a corporate army wasn’t how Lena imagined they’d earn a living. In fact, framing it that way her to rebel entirely. 

_Also, by hiring us, Louie removes two potential competitors._

That was something worth considering. Lena schooled her expression because she was sure that was a thought Louie wouldn’t want her to have.

Instead, she tugged at the sleeve of her sweater, drawing his attention to the frayed edges of the fabric. “It’s… not an awful idea,” she said.

“Great!”

“But I’m still not doing your work for you. I mean, I’m not your employee yet. Go talk to Webby about it. Meanwhile, I actually have a question for you.”

“Shoot.”

“You’ve been hiring experts on the supernatural. Know any witches in Duckburg? I’m looking to compare notes.”

At this, Louie preened, straightening the lapels of his jacket. “Do I know witches? Oh, I know witches. I got a bunch working for me. Not with your experience, obviously. Well, except maybe one.”

“Oh?”

“I’ll give you her office number. As a gesture of good faith, of course,” Louie said, and that sense of self-satisfaction had returned to his voice and made Lena wonder if she had missed a trick somewhere along the way. But she said nothing, watching him jot down a few numbers on a notepad before tearing it off and handing it to her.

“Uh, thanks,” she said. “I guess I’ll check this out. Your security knows not to mess with me now?”

Louie rolled his eyes. “They always knew, Lena. You’re in the family database. You’ve _had_ clearance to move about. They only raised a fuss because you used the wrong keycard for this section and it pinged our alert system. Then you started using magic. Which pinged an entirely different alert system.”

“So I did all that sneaking around… for nothing?”

“Probably felt good, though, right?”

“I’m just going to forget all that,” Lena said. She pocketed the number.

“I’ll just keep the security footage for my own amusement,” Louie said. He stood to leave. “Now, if you’ll excuse me. I have a lunch that needs eating.”

“Hey,” Lena said. She had spoken up out of impulse, a thought — not sudden, but always there, under the surface — and a question that she could not help but ask.

Louie stopped and turned to her, waiting.

“So do you think Scrooge is really gone? Like, for real?”

She picked at that question like it was a scab that itched on her knee. She didn’t know why. Or, to be more precise, she suspected she knew why but wasn’t willing to interrogate her own thought process enough to figure out what could be some ugly truth.

Or maybe she just hated that feeling of living with someone constantly looming over her shoulder. Couldn’t imagine why she felt like that.

“What? Yeah, I mean, as far as the law is concerned, sure.” Louie said with a hasty shrug. 

“You don’t have, like, a body though.”

“Hoo boy. Not you too.”

“I’m just saying!”

Louie crossed his arms. “Look, you just got back to Duckburg so you probably don’t know there’s a whole cottage industry of conspiracies about whether or not Uncle Scrooge is dead. Well, you and Webby are a part of the family too, so you’ll get dragged into that stuff whether you like it or not. But here in the land of actual facts? I waited the legally required amount of time before having him declared dead. And while I waited, I went out with my brothers as well as with search parties I formed at my own personal expense and we all searched the world. All the documentation is available for any conspiracy nut who actually cares to look up facts.”

“It’s not all conspiracy nuts. Webby hopes he’s still out there.” Lena hated how it felt to say that.

Louie looked at her with a gentle expression. “That’s because Webby doesn’t give up on people. Most people at least. I mean, if she did, you wouldn’t even be here.”

And Lena wanted to say something against that, but it was true. It just felt wrong to hear it from Louie.

He went on. “Glomgold, though, yikes. He’s full on brain-rot conspiracy mode. The most coherent thought he has about it is that Scrooge faked his death. And hey, fair enough. It’s happened before. But Glomgold is barely lucid these days. Duckworth’s not around anymore, for what that’s worth. Can’t even summon him through spooky rituals. My experts are divided on what that means.”

“What about Goldie? What’s she think?”

“About Scrooge? I don’t know. We talk about pretty much everything else but if he ever comes up she just gets this look. You know. Like she knows something nobody else does.”

“Maybe she does.”

“Or maybe she’s lying. Goldie’s great, but she also lies. Somebody once told me that lying is something you don’t really outgrow.”

Lena glared. Louie gave her a bright smile that told her on no uncertain terms what she could do with her glare.

“I know what people say about me,” Louie said. “That I declared Scrooge dead to get my hands on my share of the inheritance. Ignoring that I was already rich at the time, of course. You wanna know the real reason I went ahead with it? Because I need closure. I need to be able to end one chapter of my life and move on with the next. Because if I let myself stare off to the horizon and think ‘he’s still out there’ then I’m going to go crazy trying to find the old man.” Louie locked eyes with Lena. “And I’m not going to do that to myself. I think about what we’d do if Huey, Dewey and I had known that our Mom was still alive all those years ago. Stranded somewhere impossible for us to reach. What would that have done to our heads? And maybe that’s heartless. Maybe I’m burying my head in the sand. If Uncle Scrooge wants to march right into the lobby of my building and present himself, well great. But until then, I’ve got my life. And I’m not going to live it wondering who’s out there when I’ve got so much right here that needs my attention.”

“I think…” Lena searched for something to say. “… he’d probably agree with you. If he heard that.”

Louie shook his head and shrugged. “He would have spent his entire fortune looking for Mom if he could. At least, that’s what he said. So I don’t think he would agree. But I also don’t think that matters. I’m not Scrooge McDuck. I’m Louie Duck. I’m not going to be defined by him.”

This time, when Louie turned to leave, Lena said nothing.

* * *

Finding the office Louie had written down didn’t take Lena very long. It turned out there was a biometric scanner on each elevator and her thumbprint was in its database of approved users. She hadn’t needed to swipe any keycards at all. It was a little vexing.

So when she arrived at the office she was inclined to be unkind. She hesitated at the door. She was about to push it open unannounced when something stayed her hand. It was not a thing she could put her finger on, at least not immediately. It was just a sense of… familiarity. There was an aura here that she had felt before and it didn’t put her on edge, which was strange. There were only a few beings with magic powerful enough to exude an aura that she was familiar with, and very few of them inspired a sense of coziness within her.

She tried to shake it away. It couldn’t be possible. Not here. She pushed the door open. The sun streamed in through windows to illuminate a perfectly ordinary desk with shelves that were just as ordinary, if adorned with mouldering, massive tomes and an occasional skull with a runny wax candle slouched on top of it.

A shape rushed towards her, dark and quick and lean and it flung the door aside and was on her before she could react.

“Lena!”

Lena’s face was full of curly black hair. The shock of recognition made her reel back, but arms held her fast.

“ _Violet_?”

Violet Sabrewing looked up and smiled. “Copernicus’ flea infested beard! It is felicitous to see you again!”

“What the hell are you — I thought you were still studying in Egypt! Wait! What?” This last one Lena said as Violet pulled her into the office with a name plate bearing her name on her — apparently — desk. Despite Lena’s surprise, she had enough of her faculties to return her sister’s hug. When they pulled apart, Violet had a smile on her long, narrow beak.

“I did lead you to believe that I was still studying in Cairo, yes. All the better to facilitate this surprise reunion! I trust it worked?” Violet, for how serious she presented herself, had a penchant for pranks. She liked to say that nobody ever suspected her until it was too late. An attitude like that, combined with Lena and Webby, meant that Violet could be the biggest troublemaker out of the three of them. Lena kind of loved her for that.

“Yeah! Yeah it did!” Lena said breathlessly, her eyes wide. She was shocked and she was ecstatic. But also maybe a little mad at herself, because of course Louie would act like giving Lena her own sister’s contact info was a huge favor on his part. Conned again. “So… you… work for Louie now?”

Violet gave her a sly look, purple feathers crinkling on her cheeks as her smile widened. “Ah, well, perhaps I can dispel any erroneous conclusions you’ve clearly jumped to,” she said. “Come in, sit! Want a burrito? An entire cart of the stuff rolled down the hall not long ago. Sometimes the universe in all its wonders and enigmas provides you exactly what you require when you require it. Have you ever found that to be the case?”

“You know, Vi, I think I have,” Lena said, and she closed the door behind them.


End file.
